


tied together

by PenzyRome



Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: (medda voice) riots not diets, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Decisions, Body Image, Child Abuse, Cooking, Country Music, Crawfish Boils, Hurricanes, Hurt/Comfort, I'll add character and relationship tags as they appear, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Lacrosse, Latino Jack Kelly, M/M, Pining, Red String of Fate, Religious Conflict, Self-Improvement, Southern David Jacobs, a whole lotta jack character study in this one, davey speaks a little bit of nonsense but thats his right, farmers market, i'll add tags as i go, it's brief but it is there. take care of yourselves!, my fic my rules!, playlists, the rest of the jacobs family is also here but not enough to tag separately, the rules of this au are a little complex. trust me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:34:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25114726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenzyRome/pseuds/PenzyRome
Summary: The string is a sort of constant for Jack as everything else breaks down, and as he grows up, he tugs on it, sending reminders. He uses it to tell his soulmate that he exists, that he's here, and if his soulmate please won't forget him, he'll really appreciate it.
Relationships: David Jacobs/Jack Kelly, Sarah Jacobs/Katherine Plumber Pulitzer, Spot Conlon/David Jacobs (past)
Comments: 193
Kudos: 169





	1. in which jack kelly grows up

**Author's Note:**

> ok so this one!!! is gonna be a doozy. this first chapter is a lot of character building, but we'll meet davey next chapter, don't worry. tw for child and domestic abuse early on, but it's brief. if you want to skip it, skip from "their voices start to raise" to "no one who loves you does this." i really wanted to honor the red string's origin as a piece of folklore while also adding my own spin, so i hope i did it well!

When Jack first realizes that seeing the red strings is, in fact, unusual, he decides to keep his ability to see it private.

He never tells his parents, out of fear of invoking some soulmate-based anger. He never tells his friends out of worry that they'll bombard him with questions. It just feels safer to keep it to his chest, to avoid the inevitable buzz of Having The Gift.

People become famous for seeing the strings. It’s supposed to be a one-in-a-thousand chance, but enough people keep it a secret that you can reach celebrity just by playing your cards right and being born with the ability. People have matchmaking shows, businesses, economic empires. Some countries mandate marriage to your soulmate. Some couples’ therapists have someone at the door check for a string and turn away everyone who isn’t connected.

It’s a gift from God, everyone who has the gift is told. A gift from Yue Lao, from Hera, from whichever god of marriage or matchmaking or fidelity or capital-G God one believes in. You’re supposed to be lucky-- you never have a doubt who you belong with.

To people without the ability, it is a frustration. You have to rely on someone else to tell you where your heart should belong, there are countless scam artists out there faking the ability, and you feel more or less at the whim of a tiny fraction of the population.

But even for those with it, it can be a curse. It is what you and your life make of it, and Jack Kelly’s life has definitely made his ability a curse.

All his life, he sees strings draped around little fingers, stretched across streets, leading to who knows where. He sees one around his mother’s finger, and one around his father’s, but their strings don’t connect. He never talks about it, never tells them, because he’s sure they already know, so why upset them further? Why risk it?

They fight so often, they scream and shatter glass and leave bruises, so of course they must know. Jack says nothing, he keeps his head down, he makes up convenient lies for his teachers and his friends. He just tripped. A cat scratched him. He ran into the corner of the table. He was sick yesterday.

It helps that he’s clumsy already, so people tend to believe him.

He tries so hard to be a good kid. To keep his parents happy, to not worry his teachers, to make friends. It’s just confusing sometimes, the way people do things, and what their tones mean, and how to navigate every tiny new thing. He speaks out of turn sometimes, he’s either too loud or too quiet, people aren’t entertained by the facts he learns how to recite out of National Geographic books. And all the time, every day, there’s those tangled, knotted, aimless strings, stretching out across his eyes. He has to keep his hands away from them constantly, so as to not accidentally tug them, so his hands end up in his pockets most of the time.

Things with his parents get worse and worse. His father gets hired, then fired, then hired, then fired, and over and over again he loops through the cycle, never bringing enough home for them to be comfortable. His mother can’t find good work with essentially nothing on her resume, so she brings home minimum-wage earnings from the 7-11 and cries over bills at night.

Church is a refuge for him. He goes on Sundays with his mother and studies the stained glass windows, thinking about God, who is kind and forgiving and great. The words of priests and saints and angels become a safe little bubble, far away from home.

Still, his father gets drunk, his mother screams, his father screams back, and Jack buries his head under his pillow and tries to go to bed. 

It all escalates one night, when Jack has begun to think that things will turn out fine. His father has kept a job for a couple months now, and his parents are drinking, but as a celebration. Their words are light and jovial, and Jack is about to tip into sleep.

Then, their voices start to raise. Their words get louder and sharper, and Jack squeezes his eyes shut until there's a sharp, shattering noise, a thud, and the sound of his mother crying out. 

Jack throws himself out of bed, runs down the hallway, and stops short at the sight of his mother bleeding on the ground.

"No!" he hears himself say. "No, no, no,  _ please _ \--"

His father turns and bares his teeth, not unlike a lion. "Stay fuckin' quiet, kid--"

"No, please," Jack keeps begging, feeling outside of his own body.

At least, he does until there's a violent crack of pain in his face and his eye, and he stumbles back, hitting the ground.

Francis Sullivan steps back, beginning to realize what he's done, seeing his wife and son on the floor. "Jesus Christ," he says, just once. He runs a hand through his hair, and then turns and leaves as fast as he can.

Jack crawls over to his mother, who's shakily pushing herself up on her elbows. There's a bleeding cut along her forehead, and it looks like her ribs hurt. More than anything, she looks weak, fragile. She looks broken.

"Mom?" Jack says, and she opens her mouth only to let loose a shuddering sob.

"Why, Jack?" He blinks, wide-eyed and unable to understand. "Why wouldn't he just yell?"

He swallows hard, trying to find anything to say. "God says--"

"I don't  _ care _ what He says," his mother spits, and Jack's chest contracts sharply. "Do you think He cares, Jack? You think God loves you?" It must show on his face, because she laughs brokenly. “God abandoned us. Look at this, look at us.”

A broken wine glass on the floor, his mother’s blood dripping over her cheeks, the throbbing pain Jack can’t stop, the sound as his father slammed the door ringing in his ears. “God isn’t here,” she says, and it sounds like the words have ripped themselves out of her throat. “No one who loves you does this.”

Jack runs to his room and cries there for the rest of the night. His mother doesn’t make him go to school the next day, and he sits there in bed the next afternoon, blinking through tears and looking at the red string tied around his little finger. It glows, ever so softly, and trails out his window, towards the east. 

He’s never paid much attention to his own string before, but there’s a sharp ache in his chest. Your soulmate is meant for you. They have a space in their heart in exactly your shape. They’ll always want you.

Jack ever so cautiously takes the string in his opposite hand and tugs. There’s a bit of resistance, but not too much, and he stares at it for a while afterwards, wondering about what happened.

You feel it, if the string attached to you is meddled with by someone with the gift. Jack knows, logically, that his soulmate must have felt it.

He hopes, desperately, that they’re thinking about him now.

Using his shirt, he wipes at his eyes until his tears are gone. He’s seven years old, and he vows to never cry again.

From then on, it’s just him and his mother. She acts like a mother-- albeit, a distant one-- until he’s around twelve. She’s not exactly emotionally available, but she scrounges up food and goes to parent-teacher conferences. Once he hits the point in time where he can pretty much take care of himself, she becomes much more like a roommate than a parent. They coexist, pass each other in the hallways, say hello, but she never nurtures, she never seems to particularly care. 

It’s fine, it works out fine. He takes care of himself, grinds his teeth and does his schoolwork and does the chores and makes the TV dinners and manages, he really does.

Thinking about his soulmate becomes a new refuge. They've stopped going to church, and Jack can't find it in himself to pray much anymore. After being beaten down enough, his mother's words make a twisted sort of sense to him.  _ God isn't here.  _ Jack is trapped in the only place he's ever known, surrounded by people who notice him only when he's failing. He doesn't have a father, or even a mother, not really. Why would he have a God? Maybe He's real, maybe He isn't. Jack isn't sure which would hurt more.

He doesn't have so many things, but he has undeniable proof that he has a soulmate. He can see the string tied around his finger, completely guaranteeing that someone, somewhere, is going to care.

So, instead of praying, Jack will pull on the string. It almost feels like a message, like it can mean something more than what it is on the surface-- like it's a reminder. 

On his first day of ninth grade--  _ Hi. I hope your day is easier than mine. _

As he's running two miles in PE--  _ I hope you don't like running. That'd be annoying. _

When he scrapes a B on the first midterm of his high school career--  _ I'd be proud of you for little things like this. _

While he watches his mom drink cheap wine--  _ Please care about life. Just a little. _

Finally being released from the last day of school--  _ I hope you have plans. Good plans. _

When people laugh at his jokes--  _ I like to think you have friends that don't need you to be funny. Friends who keep you around for different reasons. _

He signs himself up for driving lessons sophomore year--  _ I'll take you on trips someday. We can drive with the windows open, anywhere we want. _

His mother gets the flu--  _ My bedside manner is shit, sorry in advance. _

When he gets his first "You're not my type--  _ I really am trying to not be an inexperienced idiot when I meet you. _

The moment he finds out that he managed to pass Chem--  _ I'm good at other things, I swear. _

His mother brings home some boozed-up jerk for the night--  _ I don't think I'll be very fun at wild parties. _

Two of his classmates realize that they’re soulmates--  _ Thank God you don’t know me right now. _

He gets called into the counselor’s office to talk about what he wants in a career--  _ Is it weird that I don’t know? _

Tugging on the string becomes the most honest communication he has with anyone else. He knows some people who write letters to their soulmate, but he’s content with his little reminders.

Logically, he knows that his soulmate doesn’t understand the meaning behind it all, but it almost feels like they do-- and even if they don’t, it’s still something tangible. 

He sends his messages after failed tests, excruciatingly long assignments, and group projects that feel like torture. He sends them after his mother brings someone home for the night and on days when he feels like he hasn’t said a genuine thing all day. He sends them when the easiest way to get laughs is to mock himself, and when he’s alone in his room listening to music that reminds him, a little, of what he hopes he’ll someday have.

He starts painting what he can’t say with words, using shitty watercolors from the dollar store and brushes he borrows from his art teacher. A lot of his paintings end up red.

He tugs on the string on the day he realizes he won’t mind his soulmate being a guy. He does so again the day he realizes he really,  _ really  _ wouldn’t mind, and again on the day he realizes that he might prefer it.

Girls are great, of course. He likes them just fine. But when he thinks  _ soulmate,  _ he thinks about a guy.

On prom night, he sits outside in the suit he rented, hearing the music playing inside. He has a pile of various snacks on a plate next to him, and he works his way through a snickerdoodle cookie while contemplating the string. With the time fading towards midnight, it glows stronger than the dim streetlight, pointing off towards what Jack knows is east of Santa Fe.

There are people in there dancing with their soulmates. Some of them know it, even. Jack finds himself relieved that his soulmate has always been out of reach-- whatever relationship they’ll someday have, it’ll be separate from the dreadful slog of high school.

As he stands in line to walk at graduation, he tugs on the string because he’s only just come to the realization that his life is finally going to be able to begin. He can leave Santa Fe, he can find something to do with his life, he can find his soulmate. He can leave behind the dry sand and the people who’ve politely turned him down for coffee and the childhood room filled with memories he doesn’t want to keep.

And then his mother gets sick. So, despite her barely being his mother anymore, despite the way Jack feels his chest ache when he looks east, he stays.

He stays and he stays. He learns how to repair electronic things, because he hears he can make decent money from that, and learns how to type at seventy-five words per minute. His customer service smile ends up perfect, and with insurance, his mother’s savings, and the money he makes, they’re able to scrape together enough for her medical bills.

No amount of money helps, though. When Jack turns twenty, he is far too aware that his mother is dying.

The day it happens, she looks him in the eye, strangely calm.

“You don’t have to watch,” she says faintly. “They’re just pulling wires. You don’t need to watch that.”

“I should be here for you,” Jack says, as if his presence will do anything. They know she’s going to die. The doctors have said it. They’re pulling the plug, as it were, in a half an hour.

She shakes her head a little, the movement weak. She’s always been a slip of a thing, but now she truly looks frail. It’s an odd sight, the woman who looks like she could blow away in the wind next to her son, who has always felt too heavy, too rooted to the earth.

“You’ve seen enough.” They both know she doesn’t just mean the past two years. “You’re more than I deserve, Jack, don’t watch this.”

Do not cry, he tells himself. Do not cry. He swallows thickly, nods, and stands, squeezing her hand one last time.

She manages a smile. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” He finds himself meaning it, despite everything, and he leaves the room. 

He sits in a chair outside, shifting uncomfortably every few minutes until he sees one of the nurses who passes by. The string attached to his little finger, Jack notices, leads straight through his mother’s door.

A few minutes later, a doctor walks into the room, and then he leaves. He enters again, then leaves, enters again, and leaves one last time. Jack’s been talked through the procedures, how life support is removed step-by-step to ease the process.

And then the nurse’s string, the one Jack has been watching out of the corner of his eye, vanishes.

Jack exhales slowly, finding it shaky, and he leaves the hospital.

There’s a burger joint only a short drive away, and Jack parks outside. He walks straight into the bathroom, scrubs his hands at the sink for three minutes, and then gets a cheeseburger and a strawberry milkshake to go.

He drinks the shake too fast, and it gives him brain freeze. It’s better than feeling numb, he supposes.

Three weeks later, he moves to New York City.

There isn't really any strong reasoning for the decision. New York is where dreamers go, and while Jack doesn't think he's a dreamer, he just runs with the idea.

(And, of course, the string has always pointed east. When he arrives in New York, the string points south, and it feels encouraging. One step closer, Jack tells himself.)

He moves in with three people who put up an ad online looking for a roommate. In retrospect, he's lucky he didn't get murdered. He finds a job typing out instructional manuals, which is as boring as death but leaves him with extra energy. With that energy, he paints, remembering what his art teacher told him years ago and trying to make himself feel a little more whole. He tugs on the string as he meets uncertainty, when he hits a breakthrough on a piece of art, when he’s bored at work and his mind is drifting to the life he might someday have.

What strikes him the most is just how crowded his vision is all the time. Nearly 8.4 million people live in New York City, so all the time, there are red strings stretching across the city, giving Jack a headache with the combined strength of their glow. He starts keeping his hands in his pockets at all time, to make sure he doesn’t accidentally touch any of them, and his eyes hurt constantly from the strain.

Being in New York is a little like a salve. For most of his teenage years, Jack had yearned to be out of Santa Fe, and now he is, getting to explore new places and meet new people.

The trouble is, though, that people are pretty damn similar no matter where you go. There's another line of pretty guys and girls who turn him down for dates, or with whom he never really clicks. There's the same bodega he buys his essentials at, there's the massive grocery stores with overpriced food that always leads him back to whatever he can microwave and eat in the subway. 

Eventually, though, he stops finding fascinating, new things to balance out everything that's the same. He falls into a routine, and once again, he gets antsy.

Jack Kelly can fit in anywhere. He's crafted the perfect public face, funny enough to make up for what he lacks. He's easygoing, he's friendly but never too personal. He mocks himself so that people can see his flaws, and not mistake him for a threat or for anyone better than he is.

He can fit in anywhere, but the issue is that he doesn’t feel like he belongs.

If he’s going to stay someplace forever, if he’s going to settle down, he needs to know that it’ll work. He can’t put everything on the line and lose it again. If something doesn’t fit like a puzzle piece, then he tries again and starts from scratch. It’s easier to rebuild a shack than a manor.

A little more than a year after he moves, nothing has slid into place, and the nagging at the back of Jack’s mind has resumed, telling him that it’s time to go, time to start over and keep moving.

A week later, he gets a letter from a woman named Medda Larkin. She’s an old friend of Jack’s mother, the letter explains, and has been trying to get in touch with him since his mother died.

(It’s a little too satisfying to Jack that he was hard to find.)

She says that she must know how hard this whole “situation” is, and that she’ll be happy to help with anything Jack needs.

As long as Jack can handle paperwork and customers, she says, if he’s ever near Thomasville, Georgia, she can give him a job.

He’s not there, of course, but he does a quick google search and decides that he could be.

He calls the number she wrote in the letter, and she picks up after two rings.

“Hello?”

“Miss Larkin? This is Jack Kelly.”

“Jack! I was hoping to hear from you, honey. I’m sorry about your ma.”

“It’s alright, ma’am, really. About the job offer…”

“Oh, yes! You’d be working as a secretary, and I can pay you a good bit above living wage. Ain’t you in New York?”

“Yeah, but I’ve been thinking on relocating. When could I start?”

“My current secretary is moving in three weeks, so right about then.”

Jack looks down at the string, takes a deep breath as he considers the way it points south. It couldn’t hurt to try, could it?

“I’ll be there.”


	2. in which soulmates are met

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a town of roughly 18,000 people, Jack meets David Jacobs, and they talk about everything, except the one crucial thing that Jack can't figure out how to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alrightie alrightie alrightie. some basic warnings for this chapter: some mentioned/discussed alcoholism in this one, but beyond that i think we're in the clear. we meet a LOT of people this chapter, but most importantly davey! i love writing him very much, so i hope y'all like him as much as i do. what you can expect: a lot of farmers market nonsense, a lot of "is that flirting? are we flirting?" and jack working himself into a rather regrettable situation. i upped the chapters to 4 because i was only halfway through what was supposed to be chapter two when i hit 7k and.. yeah.

Within a few hours of knowing her, Jack is sure that Medda Larkin is one of the best people he knows.

She introduces him to everyone else in the office, and explains to Jack their purpose-- bringing arts education to low income neighborhoods and students in the area. She's a director part time at the nearby theater, and speaks with such a conviction that Jack feels a little braver just for being around her.

That night, he drives around the area, and he feels his heart jump to his throat when the direction the string points turns as he does. No matter where he is, the string points towards the town, and Jack tugs on the string, feeling a little bit like he wants to cry.

_ I'm here. I'm really close, I promise. _

His second day in the office, he's working through a stack of applications to one of their programs when the bell on the door jingles. Medda, who's getting a cup of coffee, looks up, and she beams.

"Davey Jacobs!"

Jack looks over to the door, and sees possibly the most gorgeous man he's ever met in his life.

Davey beams and hugs her. "Hi, Miss Medda."

She pulls back, cuffing him on the back of his head. "Have you been hiding from me?"

"Hardly! Finals got me, and then I had to rush into the summer meal programs right after."

"The devil works fast, but you work faster, sugar." She says it wryly, poking fun at the idea and embracing it at the same time the way that Jack already knows she loves to do.

"Well, I try my damn hardest."

Jack is very much aware that he's staring, but he can't bring himself to stop. Davey's kind of dazzling, with deep brown eyes, curly hair, and freckles over every inch of his pale skin. There's a small cluster of freckles and moles right at the corner of his jaw, his cheeks are flushed pink from the heat outside, and Jack is much too aware of the way Davey's lips curve up into a sweet, mischievous little smile.

He and Medda keep talking, and Jack forces his eyes back to his papers, his gaze then subconsciously drawn to the string. It leads over his desk, straight ahead, and right to--

Oh,  _ shit. _

Jack bites down hard on his lip in an attempt to not shriek, and immediately flees to the supply cabinet.

That's his soulmate. That's Davey Jacobs, who apparently takes finals and works for charity and is Jack's fucking soulmate and is  _ hot _ . Shit, shit, shit.

Jack drums on a box of paperclips with his fingers, rocks back and forth on his feet, and is mildly secure in his courage by the time he walks back into the danger zone.

Medda looks over at him, and claps a hand on Davey's shoulder. "Oh, you two should meet!"

What the fuck is Jack supposed to say to that? Hi, I'm Jack, I'm your soulmate and I kind of want to jump your bones this instant? Hi, marry me? 

"Jack," Medda says, "this is David, he works with us sometimes. Davey, this is Jack, our new secretary."

"Pleasure," Davey says, extending his hand, and Jack shakes it, the string tangling around their fingers for a moment before Davey lets go. 

"Pleasure's mine," Jack manages, and Davey smiles again.

"Medda, I really ought to get out of your hair, I just wanted to say hello."

"Well, don't hide yourself away for long," she says. "And tell your mama I said hey!"

"Will do," Davey says. "And it was nice to meet you, Jack!" He waves and leaves before Jack can even respond, and Jack watches as he walks away, his hands tucked in the pockets of his jeans.

He has a really nice ass.

Medda hums. "What a sweet boy." She walks off and continues about her day, as does everyone else, oblivious to the fact that Jack is still reeling.

Obviously, the next logical step is a thorough Insta-stalking. Jack finds Davey pretty quickly-- his account is public, and he follows Medda's foundation. 

Most of his posts are about some sort of cause-- Davey seems to work for something that does a lot of food drives and fundraisers, and there's a lot of information about people's rights, and about voting. Beyond that, though, there's some more personal things: pictures with his friends and family and a few selfies and videos of him on a field with some others.

Jack clicks on one, just to see, and-- yeah, that's lacrosse. His soulmate is a fucking badass. He's quickly sucked into a rabbit hole of Davey's sports videos, and ends his journey with a couple pieces of information. 

One, Davey seems like a genuine, wonderful person. Two, he's unfairly hot. Three, he's miles out of Jack's league.

Four, he's working at a farmers' market on Tuesday.

Jack normally wouldn't set foot near a farmers' market. In his very limited experience, the food is expensive, the people who shop there are annoying, and the vendors all assume that he knows much more about food than he actually does.

However, with everlasting love on the line, he's willing to make an exception.

The market spans about two blocks, with stands stocked with produce, flowers, and baked goods. He buys a cheese danish and walks around with it for a while; the energy of the place is actually quite nice, and Jack thinks he'd entertain the idea of attending even without Davey there. 

Jack finds him pretty quickly-- he's manning a stand filled with vegetables, chatting with a woman while he picks out a few heads of lettuce for her. 

He waits for Davey to finish and reads the signs set up at the stand. There's a large one that reads  _ Plumber Farms _ , and one right below it that reads  _ Working with The Brave Battalion-- pay what you want.  _

When the woman walks away, Davey turns to Jack and then grins. "Hey! Jack, right? Medda's new hire?"

"Yeah. David?" As if he doesn't know that.

Davey flicks his hand dismissively. "Davey's just fine. What can I do for you?"

Oh. He hasn't thought that part through. He needs to tell him, he decides, he owes him that much.

"I--"

But that would reveal he can see the strings, and what would that cause--

"Um. Vegetables?"

Davey raises one eyebrow, amused. "You want some?"

"Sure. Yes! Yes. I just don't know which ones."

"Okay…" Davey says, drawing out the "o". "Well, how about this. Lettuce, tomatoes, and green beans are good staples, I'll get you some of those."

"Alright." Jack's face is burning, and he wrings his hands together. "Sorry, I just. I used to live in New York, and everything's expensive up there, and I never really learned how to…" He's very much aware that he's oversharing, but Davey doesn't seem to mind.

"It's all good," Davey says, smiling at him while he picks out tomatoes. "And hey, you came to the right place." He points to the smaller sign, and Jack nods, watching how the string moves as Davey dances his fingers over heads of lettuce. "I don't work for the farms, I work for Battalion-- we're a food justice group, and we focus on the same sorta issues you had. Healthy food being highly priced, not having money for groceries, and what have you."

He bags the lettuce, and then wrinkles his nose. "That was a fuckin' monologue, sorry."

"God, no," Jack rushes to assure him, "it's fine."

"Good. You're…" Davey's voice fades away a little, and he tilts his head at Jack. "You're easy to talk to."

Jack swallows hard, and Davey's eyes flick down to his throat. After a moment, he snaps out of whatever trance he's in, and holds up Jack's vegetables. 

"So! This is a really good assortment. Make some lettuce wraps, salads, hot sides, whatever you want." He considers Jack for a moment. "Do you have a cookbook?"

"What do you think?"

Davey shrugs. "I thought I'd ask. How 'bout this, you come by next week and I can give you a copy of the one Battalion compiled. It's got all sorts of stuff for cooking on a budget."

"That would be awesome, thank you."

"And in the meantime, put your number in my phone, and I can text you some real easy recipes!"

Cool, cool, cool. Phone number. Jack's phone number in Davey's phone. Cool.

He puts his number into Davey's phone, and Davey grins. "Awesome." He hands over the bags of vegetables, and Jack reaches for his wallet.

"How much do I owe you?"

Davey purses his lips for a moment, looking thoughtful. "Well, it's pay what you want normally. But I got a good feeling about you."

What the fuck was  _ that  _ supposed to mean?

"It's on the house," Davey decides.

That takes a second to register with Jack, and then he beams. "Thank you, oh my God."

Davey smiles back. "I'll see you next Tuesday," he says, and just as Jack turns and walks away, Davey winks.

His heart in his throat, Jack leaves, clutching his bags and watching the string around his finger the entire time.

_ Me: hey this is jack again _

_ Me: so. green beans. how do i make them please help _

_ Davey: hi!!!! welcome back to Davey’s vegetable help line :-) _

_ Davey: go ahead and pull or cut the stems off the beans first.  _

_ Davey: do you have a skillet with a lid? like this one? _

_ Davey: img763.png _

_ Me: yeah _

_ Davey: okay, awesome! put it on the stove on medium low, and then add some oil. you can also add some red pepper flakes to make it really tasty _

_ Me: alright _

_ Davey: once the oil is nice and hot, put the beans in there and leave them until parts of them start to brown a little. _

_ Davey: after that, you're gonna put some water in the skillet and then put the lid on! _

_ Me: ok how long do i leave them in there _

_ Davey: take the lid off after 1 to 2 minutes. prepare for some steam. _

_ Davey: if they're a nice bright green and tender, you can put some salt and pepper on them, and eat up! _

_ Me: img423.png _

_ Me: like this? _

_ Davey: yeah, they look pretty!! good work, Jack. _

_ Jack: thank u ur a lifesaver _

_ Davey: my pleasure. have a good supper :-) _

With the help of texts with Davey and Google searches, Jack makes it through the week having done more steaming, chopping, and sauteeing than he has in the last year. 

Over the course of seven days, he and Davey go from speaking only for cooking help to having long conversations throughout the day. By the fourth day, they're texting while Jack eats dinner, and by next Monday, Davey starts sending Jack goofy selfies while he makes food.

Needless to say, Jack's very excited for the farmers' market on Tuesday. He heads over before work starts, buys a blueberry muffin from the same baker as last time, and then wanders over to Davey's stand.

This time, Davey isn't working with anyone, and when Jack walks up, Davey grins. It makes Jack feel warm all over, like his ribs are pulled a little too tight.

"Hey there," Davey says, leaning on the table. "How'd it go?"

"It turns out, Davey, that I like green beans."

"Hell yeah. You wanna upgrade your salads this week?" If anyone else had said it, Jack would've rolled his eyes, but from Davey it sounds like he's offering up a little adventure.

"Let's go for it."

"Cucumber," Davey declares. "Slice this baby up with your tomato, put it in the salad, and hit it with a salad dressing." He ticks off options on his fingers: "You can chop some chicken breast and put it in there, or put the salad next to some fish, or even fix up some fruit or walnuts to throw in."

"Unlimited possibilities," Jack says, and Davey laughs.

"You know it. And hey, I got you that cookbook!" Davey unearths it, a sunny yellow paperback, and hands it over. Jack studies it for a second.

"This is… this is really nice of you."

Davey ducks his head. "Well, books are written to be read. I helped with the kosher section, actually."

"You're Jewish?" Jack asks, and Davey nods, reaching under his t-shirt to pull out a little gold Star of David on a delicate chain.

"You?"

Jack shrugs. "I don't know."

"That's fair," Davey says thoughtfully. They're quiet for a second.

"I just wanted to say thank you," Jack says, his voice much softer than he intended it to be. "You didn't have to do this."

"It ain't a big deal, really," Davey tries to say, and Jack shakes his head firmly.

"It is to me. It means a lot."

Davey smiles, a different one than any time before. His smile has been mischievous, cheerful, and bright. Now, though, it's soft and sweet, the corners of his eyes crinkling with unfiltered kindness. "Well. You're welcome, then."

Jack watches as he plays with the ring on his middle finger, a simple silver band, and he pushes back a shudder every time Davey's fingers unknowingly tangle in the string.

"Do you want the same stuff as last time?" Davey asks after a moment, and Jack nods; he starts picking out produce and bagging it.

"Is this your main thing?" Jack asks, not sure where the question came from. "Like, do you wanna work with Battalion forever?" Davey glances up, and then shrugs.

"I dunno. I'm a constitutional law student, actually, so that'd be… y'know, the dream. But I've got a good thing going right now, I figure maybe if I stick around and move up…" He sighs, then looks back to Jack with a curious smile. "What about you? Is arts-based charity your calling?"

"I…" Jack pauses. He's had this thought for a while, but he's never voiced it to anyone. It seems right, though, to share it with Davey. "I don't think I'm gonna get paid for my calling."

"Oh?"

"If I'm gonna love and pursue something for the rest of my life, I don't ever want to do it because of money, or a fucking… career." He purses his lips. "Not in like, a snooty, 'I don't want to sell out' kind of way. I just want something for myself. Something private."

When his eyes journey up towards Davey, he's looking at Jack with a soft, almost awestruck expression. "That's kind of beautiful."

Jack is suddenly bashful again. "Not really."

"No," Davey says thoughtfully, "I think it is. I think it's brave to love something outside of the pressure to… fuckin'...commodify your passion. Lord, I dunno anymore, stop listening to me." He finishes bagging everything, plus two cucumbers, and hands them over across the table.

"How much?" Jack asks, and Davey points to the "pay what you want" sign, a twinkle in his eye. "Cute, Dave, but I've got no idea how much all this costs."

"Give me a ten and we'll call it even." Jack fishes it out of his pocket and hands it over. Davey slides it into the register, grinning. "I'll see you, Jackie."

That hits Jack like a bolt of lightning, running from the back of his neck down to his feet, and he barely manages a "See you" before he turns, his face hot, and walks away.

His fingertips ache where Davey touched them, like they got so used to the contact in that split second that it hurt to have it ripped away.

It only occurs to him once he's back at his apartment that he still hasn't told Davey about the string. 

Over the next three months, Jack forms a life that one could be duped into calling stable.

He goes to work from ten to four every weekday, and sometimes comes in for extra events on the weekends. Every Tuesday morning, he goes to the farmers' market and buys a pastry and some vegetables. His breakfasts are mainly coffee and muffins, his lunches are usually a sandwich from a store near the office, and his dinners are often made with Davey's help. It's a routine, it doesn't change much.

Some things, however, do change. Davey's help, for starters, transitions from texts to video calls to them eating together a couple times a week. Davey lives alone, too, so it's good company, a way to share dinner and have someone to talk to.

Davey teaches Jack about cooking, and about legal terms. He insists he's not an abnormally good cook, but he's better than Jack, and he's definitely abnormally good with law.

Jack teaches Davey about art-- color theory, perspective, history, style, everything that he knows and could possibly share. Davey listens raptly, and Jack even sometimes recognizes some of what he's told Davey in what Davey says later on.

They share and learn more about each other, bonding over mutual loves of funny writers and kind strangers, as well as mutual hatreds of Adam Sandler movies and the feeling you get when your fingers are sticky with jam.

Davey's his best friend in Georgia. He might be his best friend from anywhere, ever, which Jack knows is odd after a little less than four months. He cuts himself some slack since they are, after all, soulmates.

He still has yet to tell Davey about that element. It isn't like he's purposefully keeping it from him. He's meant to tell him on about seventy separate occasions, but he keeps coming back to those undercurrents of fear.

One, he has learned from the world around him: that life gets more complicated once people know you can see the strings. 

The other, he has learned from the  _ people _ around him: that nothing, not even a red string, guarantees that someone will love you as much as you want them to.

He pulls on the string, still, when he's thinking about Davey or feeling down. He doesn't want Davey to get suspicious or concerned.

So maybe he is keeping it from Davey, a little bit. Who could blame him, when there's a whole myriad of reasons for him to keep his mouth shut?

Jack thinks, overall, that he's made himself comfortable in Georgia pretty well. There is, however, one thing that still keeps him sticking out like a sore thumb.

Quite frankly, he still has yet to get a car.

He never needed one in New York, and he always used his mother's in Santa Fe. Now, though, he's stuck a decent drive away from a whole lot.

That is, of course, where Davey and his truck come in.

Davey's truck is a thing of odd beauty, old and relatively cheap, but clearly cared for diligently and used well. And Davey is a technically excellent driver. He can almost recite the handbook word for word, and Medda tells Jack secretly that Davey's driving test was entirely perfect.

Despite all that technical knowledge, though, Davey is a terrifying driver. He doesn't even seem to recognize the years that he's taking off of Jack's life, he just speeds and swerves and takes slightly illegal shortcuts, swearing that his methods are safe the entire time.

To his credit, he gets Jack where he needs to go.

That doesn't negate the fact that, on a simple trip to a department store, Jack is clutching his seatbelt and distracting himself with Davey's playlists.

"What do you want?" he asks Davey, raising his voice to be heard over the engine, and Davey shrugs as if he isn't doing twenty over the speed limit. 

"Read through 'em for me."

Jack clears his throat. "'Being gay and walking fast', 'heartbreak but make it angry', 'heartbreak but make it quiet', 'vaguely horny', 'the bad bitches of country music'--"

"That one," Davey decides, and Jack plugs in the aux and presses play.

After thirty seconds, he finds himself horribly confused. "Who is this?"

Davey snaps to face Jack, incredulous. "It's The fucking Chicks, Jackie, who do you think?"

He shrugs. "I don't know country."

"Oh my God," Davey says, more to the universe than to Jack. "Just listen, we'll do your history lesson later."

Another thirty seconds, and Jack asks, bewildered, "Is this about a murder?"

"Oh my God."

When Jack gets home, he searches up Davey's profile and starts flipping through his playlists. Most of them are named in the same vein as before, but a few just have names: "Sarah", "Les", "Charlie", and "Spot".

The first three are mainly sweet, and Jack is expected the same when he clicks on the last. Instead, he receives a mix of "my-man-done-me-wrong" country and high speed, sexually graphic pop. He takes a screenshot.

_ Me: img632.png _

_ Me: explain??? _

_ Davey: awww you're stalking my playlists.. I love you too <3 _

_ Davey: also, he's a Sort Of Ex. it's complicated. _

_ Me: ex bf turned bootycall? _

_ Davey: pretty much, yeah. tire slashing involved on both ends. he's a good guy, though. _

_ Me: lmao ok. playlist rocks btw _

_ Davey: thanks, it's my true gift. _

He tries to hold himself back, but he can't, so he starts scrolling through Davey's followers, looking for anyone named Spot.

After careful inspection, he finds it: Spot Conlon, 21, just like Davey and Jack. His account isn't particularly organized, just a lot of pictures of his friends, of two kids that look like him, and of himself at the gym.

Jack clicks on one of them and, yeah, this guy is hot. He sincerely hopes that Davey doesn't have a set in stone type, because there is no universe in which Jack has muscles like Spot does.

He tugs on his shirt, trying to tell himself that he doesn't all of a sudden feel woefully inadequate. After a little more scrolling, he finds another picture that makes him feel sick to his stomach.

There's Spot in one half of the frame, and in the other, unmistakably, is Davey. Spot's head is tilted up, and he's pressing a kiss to Davey's jaw; Davey is caught perfectly mid-laugh.

The timestamp is from New Year's Day, and the caption just reads  _ "found this babe last night. should i keep him, yes or no ;)" _ .

Right underneath, Davey left a comment that day:  _ "don't think it'll be *you* keeping *me*..." _ .

Jack swallows hard, feeling a bitter pool of jealousy swirling in the bottom of his stomach. Without thinking, he reaches for the string and tugs.

Going on autopilot, he digs through his freezer until he finds his emergency pint of Cherry Garcia, grabs a spoon, and sits down to watch something with Hugh Grant in it.

Three days later, as he goes back through Davey's playlists to try and find something to listen to, he spots a new one: "you're in a car with a beautiful boy".

He turns it on, tugs on the string, and allows himself to hope.

Davey, as Jack has learned, isn't a partier. He does love his friends, though, so Jack finds himself invited to a late afternoon get-together.

It is there that he discovers that there are two breeds of Southern Gay Twenty-Somethings.

Davey is Type One: deeply upset about the injustices in the world, determined to fix them, an avid supporter of green smoothies.

His sister, Sarah, is Type Two: horrifying amounts of fun, frighteningly sarcastic, and a hardcore stoner.

Jack _adores_ her.

She shows up with Charlie, another one of their friends, the two of them both obnoxiously high, and they spend the next two hours telling Jack every embarrassing story about Davey they know.

He had worried, before, about whether or not Davey's friends would like him, and about his several unfortunate stress habits.

It is a welcome surprise, of course, that his nervous laughter and stress eating are absolutely nothing compared to what havoc weed wreaks on Sarah and Charlie's common sense.

Davey ushers them out of his apartment after a painfully long story about Davey and a guy he liked in sophomore year, and he promptly collapses on the couch.

"I am so fucking sorry about them."

Jack laughs. "Nah, they were great." He sits down next to Davey, tucking his feet up on the couch, and then asks hesitantly, "Can I ask you a question?"

Davey looks at him curiously. "Shoot."

"How careful should I be here about liking guys?"

The easy grin slips off of Davey's face, and he sighs. "I mean… I'm a special case. Never liked girls, never even pretended. And honestly, with all the shit I get up to with Battalion, I'm already kinda 'out there' from the whole conservative mainstream."

"I like girls a bit," Jack offers, "but mostly guys."

Davey nods slowly. "If I'm being honest, I've got in some fucked up shit for being out with guys. Lacrosse helped, because people knew I wouldn't let my own ass get kicked. But if you're trying to choose between kissing a guy in public or not? Just wait. It's easier that way."

It had been what Jack was expecting to hear, but the raw edge in Davey's voice catches him off guard. Before he can think to stop himself, he reaches out and takes Davey's hand, threading their fingers together. Davey smiles at him softly, bumping their shoulders.

"It's okay," Davey promises. "Charlie and I'll take you out sometime, there's bars and stuff nearby. As long as you're around Medda, you're safe."

Jack nods and squeezes his hand tighter, looking down at the string and wondering about all the people who had to look at their string and receive news they didn't want.

_ Davey: come over for brunch! _

_ Me: … why _

_ Davey: because I have actual food with nutritional value and not just muffins. _

_ Me: you arent really selling this well _

_ Davey: I'll make mimosas. _

_ Me: there u go. be over in fifteen xx _

Jack agonizes for three minutes over what to wear, and then calls in the cavalry.

_ Me: lets say i am trying to look attractive and fun for brunch. what do i wear _

_ Charlie: underwear _

_ Me: not helpful thank u! _

_ Charlie: i would be more helpful if u gave me deets _

_ Me: no. _

_ Charlie: lmao fine. miss out on my stellar advice for all i care _

_ Charlie: … _

_ Charlie: dave likes guys in blue _

With that in mind, Jack hesitantly settles on his blue button-up and tucks the front of it into his pants as he half walks, half jogs to Davey's apartment.

He stands at the door for a minute or so to look less frantic and sweaty, and then texts Davey to buzz him up. Davey opens the door still in an apron, his hair pushed back and flour streaked across his hands. "Jack!"

"Hey, Davey." There's a moment of quiet when Davey's eyes sweep across Jack, and then Davey beams.

"Come in! You look great, blue's a good look on you."

"Oh. Thanks."

Davey brushes his hands off on his apron. "I'm just about done in the kitchen. You wanna eat at the dinner table, or the coffee table?"

Jack's been in Davey's apartment a lot before, and Davey knows he loves the old green sofa Davey's parents gave him.

"Coffee table."

"Awesome. You can sit down, if you want, or come observe my chaos."

Jack chooses to follow Davey into the kitchen, taking in the clutter and mayhem of used dishes, food, and flour, clearly used for something still in the oven. Davey pulls two plates out of his cupboard and starts to serve food-- eggs and toast, turkey sausage, and peach slices and berries. Jack carries them to the coffee table while Davey pours mimosas and brings the two glasses over with the rest of the pitcher.

"You, Mister Jacobs," Jack declares after his first sip, "are a godsend and a wonderful man."

"Mm, well, I try. All part of my despicable plan, y'know, I'm fixing to get you off of corporate America's TV dinner crackpipe."

The sentence is so absurd that it doesn't sting, and they both laugh. Davey has a talent for saying the things that other people use as insults and genuinely meaning well. 

"You know that if you keep making home cooked meals like this, a fella's gonna want to stay." He means it as a joke, but it's secretly serious. Davey thrives in domesticity, rooted life, all the things that Jack has been scared of since he was young. The way that Davey welcomes Jack into that world, though, makes him a little less afraid.

He looks to Davey, who is gazing at him, clearly contemplative. When he speaks, it's much more sincere than Jack is prepared for. "I do want you to stay."

Jack distracts himself with a bite of toast, trying to ignore the heat rising in his cheeks.

"I listened to 'Home', by the way."

Davey hums through a mouthful of eggs. "Divine, huh?"

"It was really good," Jack admits, and Davey punches his shoulder. 

"So we trust my taste?"

"Yeah."

Davey pretends to cheer, and Jack looks down at the string, tangled across the few inches left between their hands. 

When Davey pours their refills, he warns, "After another one of these, I'm gonna get sloppy. It ain't pretty."

Jack laughs. "Lightweight, huh?"

"I just don't drink much besides wine on Shabbos. My tolerance is shit."

"Oh. Any reason, or…" Davey glances down, and worry sparks in the center of Jack's chest. "You don't have to talk about it."

"It's just kind of a lot. I don't want to kill the morning."

"Dave," Jack says, "don't worry. The morning'll live." That coaxes a smile out of him, and he swallows hard before he speaks.

"My dad's an alcoholic."

"Oh."

"He's been sober a couple years, but it was bad. A truck fucked him up on the job when I was in sixth grade, and he just sorta… fell into it."

"How long?" Jack asks, his voice quiet. Davey doesn't look towards him, just closes his eyes for a moment to think.

"It really got bad when I was in seventh grade. About the time I moved out he finally got sober."

"Six years."

"Yeah." Davey fiddles with his fingers, and Jack feels a hole forming in his chest that Davey, who is kind and strong and good, would ever have to live through that his whole teenage life.

"I'm sorry," he says, like it could ever be enough. "I'm sorry," again, like it's a prayer, like if he hurts enough for Davey he can take the other's hurt away.

"It's not your fault." Davey looks over to him then, and his gaze is heavy and sad. "I just… that's why. I don't want it to fuck me up that bad."

Jack nods as he tries to find words. "It's better now?"

"Yeah," Davey says, the relief evident in his voice. "My little brother still lives with them, and it's a lot better. My mom was so goddamn patient. They ain't soulmates, y'know?"

A sudden, freezing worry appears in Jack's mind. "Huh?"

"My mom and dad. They aren't soulmates. Didn't even know that until after they got hitched."

"Oh," Jack manages, choking the word out as the fear grows.

"But they're good," Davey says. His voice is soft, and his lips curve up gently. "They're so good for each other, soulmate or no. Gives me hope, I suppose."

Hope for what? Jack just nods, pressing his shoulder against Davey's to try and make him feel less alone.

Suddenly, Davey bites into a slice of peach and groans. Jack almost chokes on his eggs, his face going hot, and Davey points his fork at Jack's fruit.

"Try that right fucking now."

Happy with the subject change, Jack does. "Shit."

"I know, right? Georgia, I tell you."

After two more drinks, Jack's common sense is gone, and he's ranting about Mormons.

"I just hate their fucking bullshit with their big churches and their missions. They go ding dong, how'd you like to see God's truth? God fucking hates me, cross me off the list."

When he turns to Davey, he looks sad, his brow furrowed. "Why would you think that?"

And looking at the soft downturn of Davey's lips, experiencing that compassion and concern he never runs out of, Jack breaks.

He tells him about everything: his mother, his father, the shattered bottles, that night when he was seven and the things his mother said, the subtle realization that he had been entirely abandoned, the way she wasted away and died.

He tells him about everything except the strings.

"I just don't know how God lets that happen to someone He loves, to someone He even just fucking tolerates." Davey is crying as Jack talks. It's the most heart wrenching thing when Davey cries-- he does for others, for people who have lost loved ones and pets that die in movies and little kids who skin their knees, but he never cries for himself. "I don't know what I did, Davey--"

"No," Davey says as sharp as glass. "Jack, none of that was your fault."

Jack blinks, and the brief anger in Davey's eyes fades. "No matter what you did, you didn't deserve that. None of what happened was your fault, Jack, none of it."

The words sink around Jack, folding around him and keeping him safe from the world for a moment. Davey reaches forward and takes his hands, looking him right in the eye. "It isn't your fault," he repeats, and Jack exhales shakily before he sinks into Davey's shoulder.

Davey holds him both tightly and gently, as carefully as can be but fiercely enough to shield him from anything. "I know we see God differently," Davey says softly, "even before everything that happened to you. But He doesn't hate you, Jack. That was not punishment. You don't have to be guilty."

Jack breathes deeply. Davey smells like his citrus shampoo, and he squeezes Jack tightly when he says, "Thank you."

It would be so easy to tell Davey, right now, about the strings. Late morning light shining through the windows, alcohol in their systems, both of them sheltered in each other's arms.

But Jack remembers Davey's unidentifiable hope, his knowledge that you can find the love of your life without finding your soulmate. It stops the words as they come out, sticks his mouth shut.

He buries his head in Davey's shoulders and tries to hold him just as tightly.

_ Me: hiiii i need a favor _

_ Davey: what? _

_ Me: come with me to get pie? i went alone last time i dont want them to think i dont have friends _

_ Davey: I'll go with you around 3 if you come with me to a lacrosse game with my old team. _

_ Me: are you playing _

_ Davey: yeah, it's just a pickup sort of thing. _

_ Me: deal _

With anyone else, Jack would be pretty sure that this is a date. With Davey, however, he has come to realize that this is entirely normal. He likes to go places and do things, and he likes to haul Jack along with him.

To be fair, Jack is always eager to accompany him.

They drive a while to the field Davey and his friends sometimes play games on, Davey's "scream in the car" playlist blasting through the speakers.

It's a nice drive, really, but Jack spends the entire time watching Davey. He sings along loudly to the music, forcing Jack to remind him multiple times about watching the road, and with his gear in the back of the truck, he's just in workout clothes.

Jack doesn't know what he expected Davey to wear-- when he, for whatever reason, is dragged into exercise, he just wears a t-shirt and sweatpants like a normal person.

Davey, however, is far from normal. He's wearing tight athletic pants and some sports jersey that's been cut into a crop top-- something Jack wouldn't be caught dead in but that's horrifyingly attractive on Davey.

He very pointedly is  _ not  _ looking at Davey's stomach, certainly not thinking about the lines of lean muscle and his appendectomy scar and his freckles, no, he is not.

When they finally arrive, Davey grabs his bag out of the bed of the truck and jogs towards his friends, already congregated on the field. Jack follows close behind, and too late recognizes one of the figures there.

Spot whoops as Davey nears the crowd. "Jacobs!"

"Conlon!" Davey yells, pulling him into a one-armed hug. If Jack can be grateful for small miracles, it's that Spot is just that-- small.

In terms of height, at least. He's still reasonably sure Spot could kick his ass.

Spot draws back, and Jack doesn't miss the way his eyes scan over Davey and drink in the sight of him. "How you doing, Peach?"

"Just fine. Hey, Jack, come here!" Jack walks up, and Davey releases Spot to rest his hand on the small of Jack's back. "Jack, this is Spot, I told you about him. Spot, this is Jack, he's a friend."

"A friend or a  _ friend _ ?" Spot asks, smirking, and Davey groans.

"Quiet, dickwad. Jack," he says, turning them towards the rest of the group, "that's Finch, Elmer, Buttons, and Raf. They're old friends and teammates. I dunno who everyone else is." He grins brightly, and Jack can't help but smile back. "If you want, we've got a couple of partners and friends just here to hang out, you can sit with them while this shit goes on."

"Good luck, soldier," Jack says, deepening his voice, and it makes Davey throw back his head and cackle.

"I'll need it, doll. You'll still be here when I return from war?"

"Waiting patiently for your return," Jack says, and he sees Spot give the two of them an odd look. 

Davey's smile suddenly becomes something sweet and private, and he says just loud enough for only Jack to hear, "I'm really glad you came."

Then he jogs off, and Jack goes to sit in the hot sun in lieu of a cold shower. He settles down next to a short girl with bright blue box braids, and she immediately sticks out her hand to shake. “Joey.”

“Jack. Are you friends with someone?”

“No, I just like to randomly watch lax pick-up games.” He raises one eyebrow, and she giggles. “Nah. I’m Raf’s friend.” She studies him for a moment, and then says, “Girlfriend, actually.”

“Cool.”

“You’re here with Davey, right?” Jack nods, and she looks almost impressed. “Is this your first time here?” Another nod. “Dude, you are in for a wild time.”

Thirty minutes later, he asks her, “Is that move allowed?”

“Remarkably, yes.”

When the game ends, Jack walks up to Davey, who’s sitting on the field and peeling off his gear. “Thoughts?” he teases, and Jack crouches to look him in the eye.

“You’re a fucking maniac.”

“Mm, I put on a show for you.” He shoves his gloves back in his duffel bag and stands. “Alright, I promised you pie and I intend to deliver.”

Jack orders cherry pie, and after a certain amount of pestering, Davey relents and gets a slice of key lime. They sit in a booth by the corner window, and chat for a while.

Finally, Jack asks, “Why does Spot call you Peach?”

Davey tilts his head. “Because I play as her in Mario Kart, what do you think?”

He shrugs. “I dunno.”

“Oh, you totally thought something. C’mon, tell me, I deserve to know. Tell me, Jackie. You can have a bite of my pie if you tell me. You never have to come watch a lax game again if you--”

“Fine! I thought it was like… Georgia peaches.” He purses his lips, and Davey looks unconvinced. “And like. Your ass.”

Davey laughs so loud everyone else in the pie shop turns to glare at them, and he desperately tries to apologize while he still shrieks with laughter. Jack’s chest constricts, watching him laugh, watching the string tangle around them as Davey holds his hands to his mouth.

He can tell him right now. It would be so easy to tell him, to admit the truth, to lean across their table and kiss him.

But he doesn’t, because Davey is still laughing.

It had been a shit day already, painfully muggy and hot until rain poured down while he walked home and soaked him to the bone. He had changed into pajamas at five in the afternoon, giving up on the day at that point.

He’s thinking about painting when he realizes that he’s out of watercolor paper, and at that point collapses on his couch, debating whether it’s worth it to journey to Publix in order to get a movie from the Redbox and a box of chocolate chip cookies. His phone buzzes, and he groans before he brightens-- his phone is on “Do Not Disturb”, but he has Davey’s number as being able to break that rule.

He recognizes that this is a little pathetic, but it’s perfect for moments like this. He grabs his phone, fully prepared to debate something stupid, and then frowns.

_ Davey: hey, just so you know, if I don’t respond to something tonight, don’t get freaked out. _

_ Me: …. ok? _

_ Davey: all I will say is that a guy invited me for post-fundraiser drinks, sooooo… _

_ Me: ah. get some! _

_ Davey: why thank you ;) _

Every muscle in his body feels stretched too tight, about to snap, and he turns his phone off, chucking it onto the opposite end of the couch and standing up to pace around the room.

Davey is going out with a guy. He plans on going home with this guy. This guy was at a fundraiser, which means he’s probably smart and politically conscious and caring, and Davey is going out with him, which means he’s probably hot.

Davey’s parents aren’t soulmates, but they love each other so much, they work so well, and it gives Davey hope. Hope for what?

Jack is Davey’s soulmate. He’s meant for Davey, he is literally, cosmically perfect for him. 

What if he ends up with someone less than perfect for him?

What if he ends up with someone that isn’t his soulmate?

What if he ends up with someone that isn’t Jack?

He tries to forget it, he decides on the Publix trip, watches a movie about dogs, and eats cookies. The calm lasts about three hours before he starts worrying again.

Time seems to blur for a bit-- he scarfs down the rest of the cookies and picks at his cuticles until they bleed, trying to justify just going to bed and dealing with everything in the morning. It’ll be fine, he tells himself, everything will be fine--

He can’t cry. He can’t cry about this, he won’t be the idiot who sobs at home about a  _ boy  _ while said boy is having fun--

Is he going to end up just like his mother, so close and so heart wrenchingly, awfully far--

He tugs on the string.

Afterwards, he stares at his hand for a while, trying to decipher why he would do that and how to justify it and what it means.

He worries himself to sleep, and the next morning, wakes up on the couch.

_ Me: so dare i ask how it went _

_ Me: no graphic details pls and thanks _

_ Davey: I actually went home by myself around 10. _

_ Me: was he gross? or? _

_ Davey: no, there was just. something in me that told me not to. _

That’s the result he wanted, he tells himself, but he can’t shake the nagging feeling that he’s done something terribly wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some quick notes: this farmers market is a real thing! it happens on saturdays and tuesdays, but davey takes the tuesday shift because he spends saturdays with his family for shabbos! the brave battalion is a food justice organization i made up-- the name from seize the day, of course-- fighting for communities to be able to grow, sell, and eat healthy, local food! plumber farms is run by an individual who you will meet very soon ;). their partnership is based off of a few that i've seen before. also that green bean recipe is real think of me as you make green beans  
> a big old shoutout again to @rensauce for helping me develop this au and also giving me the idea of davey working out in a jersey cut into a crop top. thank u and god bless  
> so where do we think this will go? what's gonna happen? how is jack going to deal with this situation he's worked himself into? what position do you guys think davey plays in lacrosse! please leave me a comment, it brightens my day and is a big part of me continuing to update this at a vaguely reasonable rate  
> i'm on tumblr @penzyroamin, and i'd really like it if u rbed the post for this fic! it's got a pretty moodboard and it's my pinned post, just to make it easy for you :)  
> have a lovely morning/afternoon/evening/middle of the night wherever you are!


	3. in which certain mistakes and decisions are made

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack digs himself into an even deeper hole, and then a storm forces him out of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alrightie. so this is a doozy. if hurricanes and their aftermaths are a trigger for you, please be cautious when reading this, and if you won't be able to, just message me @penzyroamin on tumblr for a chapter summary. everyone else... just... good luck. im sorry

Jack debates the morality of what he did for a long time. He didn’t even fully intend to do it in the moment-- if he had been in his right mind, he wouldn’t have. It feels possessive and greedy, distracting Davey from good people who are trying to date him when Jack himself has made zero progress towards asking him out.

It’s not fair to Davey, but he did it, and he can’t take it back now.

There are a lot of awful stress habits and coping mechanisms hidden in the depths of Jack's mind, and over time, he slowly learns about Davey's.

He runs when he's anxious, he cooks when he's going through something rough, and when he's angry, he builds puzzles.

So when he walks into Davey's apartment, arms loaded with dinner groceries, to find him building "Great State Landmarks", he knows something's wrong.

"Hi?"

Davey looks up, and momentarily startles when he sees Jack standing there. "Oh. Can you hand me that piece of the Redwoods?" Jack finds the oddly shaped piece he points out, and hands it over. Davey sticks it in place and huffs, seeming satisfied. "Alright," he decides, "now dinner."

Davey's more willing to open up when he's distracted by something, so Jack waits until Davey is checking on the tomato sauce on his stove. "Hey, are you doing okay?"

"Of course. Why wouldn't I?" He stirs the sauce a little too aggressively.

"You puzzle when you're angry. And I get that like, a simmering, underlying anger is kinda your schtick--" the word makes Davey smile softly-- "but it doesn't seem… underlying."

Davey bites at his bottom lip, and Jack notices the little physical signs-- his tightened jaw, the firm set of his shoulders, his cuticles picked raw-- to show that he is carrying some sort of burden. His lips purse, and he finally says, "I know how to live my life."

"Okay?"

He sets the spoon down. "I'm not fucking  _ settling." _

"Of course you aren't," Jack says, bewildered. He waits for Davey to say something else, but he just moves to the pasta, not elaborating any further. 

Jack decides not to press any more for now.

Under Davey's direction, he helps out with the spaghetti, and when Davey's plating it, he sets the table and dumps parmesan on top of his own pasta. 

They spend a while chatting about random things-- Jack's mismatched socks, Davey's family tree- until Jack broaches the subject.

"So you wanna talk about why you're mad?"

The crease between Davey's eyebrows reappears, and Jack wants to reach across the table and smooth it away, but he doesn't. 

"I… my boss at Battalion said I'm 'stagnating'." He uses his fingers to air-quote the word, and Jack frowns through a mouthful of pasta. "They think I should be trying to move up, or get an internship at a firm, or something. But I'm happy where I am."

"Are you?" Jack asks without really intending to, and Davey tenses, but after a moment, he sighs.

"I dunno. I'm good at what I do right now. I might mess something else up."

"You'd be great. It isn't like you'd get a rocket science internship."

That makes Davey laugh softly, his eyes drifting towards his pasta as he fiddles with his ring. "You just think that I'd be great."

His fingers brush against the string, and Jack bites back  _ I  _ know  _ you'd be great, because I'm your soulmate and I know you _ as it threatens to trip off of his tongue.

Instead, he says, " _ You  _ just think that you'd be bad."

That makes Davey pause and hesitate. "Maybe," he says after a while, and they leave it at that.

After they clean up dinner, they move to Davey's couch, where the puzzle is still half-built on the coffee table. Jack's already in standard relaxation clothes-- sweatpants and a shirt so big no one could possibly guess where he ends and the shirt begins-- but Davey came home from a meeting, so he goes to his bedroom to change out of his dress pants and button-up.

Jack mourns the loss of Fancy Clothes Davey as he looks for a movie. In a few minutes, Davey returns, this time in boxers and a t-shirt with a picture of an alligator in a cowboy hat.

"What are you thinking?" he asks, pointing to the TV.

He's thinking about Davey's legs, but that's beside the point. "Campy romcom?"

Davey falls onto the sofa. "Go for it."

About thirty minutes into the glorious monstrosity-- something about a woman realizing she and her sister's fiance share a string-- Jack finds himself saying, "Everyone in these movies are too attractive."

Davey barks out a laugh, and Jack grins, insisting, "I'm serious! They're all movie-star hot, it makes me think they aren't actually in love."

"So hot people can't love?" Davey teases, earning him a pinch to the ear.

"You know what I mean. If that dude looked like me, you would know the romantic speech she's gonna give him is  _ real. _ "

That makes Davey frown suddenly, the movie forgotten. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Jack flounders for a moment. A line like that is supposed to make someone laugh. It's supposed to be clever and snarky, but Davey's frowning instead, and he can't explain the joke, he's just supposed to be able to look at Jack and  _ get it. _

They're supposed to laugh about it and move on, not discuss it.

"I just--" he wishes he could shrink and wither into himself-- "you know what I mean, it's no big deal."

It's supposed to be  _ him  _ psychoanalyzing Davey and making him feel better after his day, but here they are, everything flipped around.

"Jack," Davey says, so firmly that he's forced to look him in the eye. "You're handsome." He says it so plainly and simply, as if it needs no amendments or conditions.

"Yeah, okay."

Just a little while ago, when Davey gave him essentially the same answer, Jack dropped the topic, but Davey pushes further, placing his hand on Jack’s knee and leaning closer to study him.

"You have really dark, pretty eyes. And good hair, too-- it'd be even nicer if you let me teach you how to style it."

The back of his neck is hot, and he feels both elated and uncomfortable at the way Davey scans him. Davey's awful at lying, so Jack would be able to see it if he was just making this up-- but the idea that he isn't is, within itself, difficult to believe.

"I like your shoulders, and your jaw." He points at Jack. "You're hot, and I will die forcing you to believe it."

Jack chokes out a laugh. "Okay, then." Davey shrugs, and looks back to the movie, his hand still resting gently on Jack’s leg.

It's the weirdest conversation he's ever had, but he can't stop smiling as he walks home.

“So run me through this again.”

Davey groans. “We all get together at Kath’s place and have a crawfish boil. There’s fish for me and Sarah. We drink and sing along to music and catch up on people’s lives. It’s like Thanksgiving, except less evil, and with friends, and summer.”

Jack is familiar with Kath’s place-- she runs Plumber Farms, and Davey took him there for what he called “Baby’s First Hurricane Party”. There was a lot of alcohol, cake, and pessimism. Katherine herself is awesome, though-- she seems to flutter above every crowd, like a spotlight centers her and makes her infinitely more lovable.

“What if I have something to do?”

“Do you?” Davey asks, raising one eyebrow. Jack purses his lips. Technically, his Sunday plan had been stalking his old classmates on the internet to see how poorly their adult lives had treated them and trying to make homemade ice cream.

“No,” he admits. “But I could’ve.”

“Jack, it’s the best, I promise. I don't even like parties, you know that. You can sit in the corner with Charlie the entire time if you want.” Davey pouts a little, and Jack wouldn’t be able to resist him even if it weren’t for the soulmate aspect.

“Fine.”

Come Sunday, Jack walks to Davey’s apartment to drive over with him, Sarah, and Charlie. The weather is blessedly less awful than normal-- there’s a slight breeze to temper the blazing sun and the humidity, and he feels almost confident when he knocks on Davey’s door.

Charlie opens the door and rolls his chair back so Jack can come inside. “Jack!”

Sarah and Davey look up, and Sarah cheers. Davey rolls his eyes at her as he stands. “Jack, you have a hat, right?”

“No, did I miss a dress code update?” Charlie snorts at that.

“It’ll just be bright out. You can grab one if you want, it’s the third shelf from the bottom in my closet.” He doesn’t see the point in arguing, so he heads to Davey’s room and observes his baseball hats-- half covered in kitschy sayings, half less humiliating to wear. He’s fighting between a well-worn, plain blue one and one with a alligator on it when he sees it.

It being, specifically, Davey’s letterman jacket.

Half of him wants to laugh-- of course, Davey would have one-- but he’s also interested, so he takes a closer look. It’s a deep blue, with soft cream and bright white accents. It reads  _ Jacobs  _ across the back, and displays various accomplishments.

Jack knows, in the back of his mind, that people are waiting for him, and he should just get a hat and continue on his way. The thought, however, doesn't stop him from staring at the jacket.

It would be too small on him, he reminds himself, in the most horribly uncomfortable way, and it's about a million degrees out, anyways.

Maybe it smells like Davey's shampoo.

Great, now he’s like a fucking cheerleader, thinking about wearing a boy’s jacket when he isn’t even dating said boy. (His  _ name is on it. _ )

He grabs the blue hat and flees before he can think any further about it.

Davey grins when he returns, pointing at the hat. “That’s a good one. Can we leave now?”

Jack isn’t quite sure what a crawfish boil is until he gets there. He looked it up, trying to not seem like a complete idiot, but he’s not prepared for the row of tables covered in newspaper and the massive pot that Katherine and her brother are already lording over.

They show up early so Davey can help with the fish, and Jack spends the first hour sitting in the shade of Katherine’s porch with Sarah and Charlie, admiring Davey from afar. The two are in an active debate about the value of Lilly Pulitzer, letting Jack space out for a bit and think. (“She’s tacky!” “Asshole, she is  _ camp. _ ”)

Jack’s pretty sure Lilly Pulitzer, as a person, has been dead for a while, but he doesn’t interjet. Instead, he watches the strings. There’s one dangling between Katherine and Sarah’s hands, and they seem to be aware of that-- Katherine kissed Sarah when the four of them showed up. He marks them as people he doesn’t need to worry about.

Charlie’s string soars off into the distance, as does Katherine’s brother’s, but her sister doesn’t have one. Jack isn’t surprised by it, although he does note it. There are plenty of reasons not to have a string-- she might be aromantic, her soulmate may have died, she might just not have one. Still, he makes a point to remember it, just in case.

And as always, the string between him and Davey glows softly, waiting.

He might tell him tonight, if everything goes well: maybe he’ll pull him towards the far side of Katherine’s house and pour it all out for him to know.

Maybe.

People start to trickle in, and soon a small crowd has formed in Katherine’s yard, chatting and mingling and periodically checking in on the food. Jack can see Davey becoming tenser at people constantly staring over his shoulder at the fish, so he’s considering going over to talk to him before a new guy walks up and actually starts a conversation.

He’s fine with this. This is normal. People can talk to Davey. That’s fine. Jack is fine.

Charlie strikes up a new conversation, this one about the newer ramps Medda is installing at the theatre, and Jack participates halfheartedly, one eye always on Davey and the guy.

Davey laughs at a lot of his jokes, and before long, they’re pressed shoulder-to-shoulder. Charlie turns to talk to someone, and Jack keeps looking, trying to disguise his spying by pretending to scroll through his Notes app.

He keeps his cool when the guy looks at Davey through his eyelashes, when Davey’s fingertips land momentarily on his shoulder. Davey turns off the deep fryer, Katherine starts dumping the vat full of crawfish, corn, potatoes, okra, garlic, and sausage all over the tables, and Jack almost thinks he’s in the clear.

And then, the guy puts his hand on Davey’s waist, and they both lean in.

In a split-second move, Jack  _ yanks _ on the string, and Davey almost topples over, his hand pulled sharply towards Jack. It would be comical if Jack’s stomach didn’t immediately drop at his own actions. He’s done it again.

The guy tilts his head, and Davey seems to apologize before he walks away, bewildered. Oh, God, he’s done it again.

He doesn’t tell Davey that night.

All next week, he feels horribly guilty every time he sees Davey, and he goes for lunch with Charlie just to try and take his mind off of it. They spend about twenty minutes with cornbread and pleasant conversation, and then Charlie clears his throat, looking like something is eating at him.

“Jack, I… I gotta tell you something.”

“Shoot.”

He fiddles with his hands in front of him, his lips starting to form the words a few times, and he finally spits out, “Jack, Davey’s your soulmate.”

Oh.

“I can see them. The strings,” he explains. “I wasn’t gonna tell you, but I just thought one of you should know, and you just seemed like the right one to tell.” Jack swallows, trying to puzzle out what to say-- whether to reveal himself to someone who might understand, whether to keep himself safe whatever the circumstance.

“I-- thanks,” he says eventually. “Thanks for telling me.”

Charlie exhales, his shoulders slumping. “Y’all just… seem like you’ve known each other for years.” He shakes his head, almost bemused. “Tell him sometime. Make a move.” Jack startles, and he sighs. “Don’t try to tell me you ain’t gone over him.”

Jack orders more cornbread.

That night, he lies awake in bed for far too long. Almost hesitantly, he tugs on the string, thinking about Davey. About the way he flushes when he's complimented, about his freckles and dimples, about how he cut the potatoes at the crawfish boil with saltine crackers like they were knives. About how drastically Jack is fucking this up, every step of the way.

Who's to say Davey won't be furious, when he tells him? Jack would be. 

There's a tiny, possessive fire burning at the back of his throat, sparking on his tongue, begging Davey to not love anyone but him.

He wants to stamp it out, but at the same time, he wants Davey to do just that.

He wants Davey to follow his pleas, but he doesn't want to say them out loud.

He swears to himself, over and over, that he'll never do it again. He'll never try to dissuade Davey from a hookup or date, he'll never try to stake a claim over someone who isn't his.

And then he does it again, the first time Davey and Charlie take him to a gay bar two towns over.

He does it again at a fundraiser he helps Davey with, when he notices him and another guy eyeing each other.

It becomes a little bit of a pattern, and yet Jack promises, each time, that it won't happen again.

He knows it's wrong, but the fear keeps creeping back into his mind. In his imagination, his worst dreams, he can see Davey dating, getting married, raising a family, buying a brick house with a white picket fence somewhere, all the while the string dangling unnoticed between them.

So he's never able to stop himself in those moments of absolute gut wrenching panic.

In the while that Jack’s lived in Georgia, he has yet to come face-to-face with a full force hurricane. They’ve been grazed a few times, but so far, his experience hasn’t gone past hurricane parties at Katherine’s after some vague preparation. 

The first time, he had been frantic, but the parties are oddly soothing, taking his mind off of the slim chance of impending doom. When he tells that to Davey, it gets him a laugh.

“That’s kinda the point.”

This time, though, it’s different. The weather reports say Hurricane Mina will stay closer to the coast, but it’s moving oddly, and has ripped through the bottom of Florida.

Jack's more on edge than usual-- things seem to be taking a nasty turn that he doesn't want to follow, but he awaits Davey's guidance.

He gets it when Davey practically slams down his door, running into Jack's home and scrambling for anything that looks like an essential.

"Pack a bag  _ right now,  _ Jack, I'm not fucking around, where the  _ fuck _ is your ID?"

"In the safe? Davey, what--"

Davey turns around, still shoving random shirts and picture frames into a duffel bag he brought with him. "Jim Cantore is here!  _ Jim Cantore is here _ , we are  _ screwed _ !"

Jack is, of course, familiar with Jim Cantore-- Davey refers to him as “an omen of destruction”, and Medda seems to be a little into him. (“There’s just something about a man that can predict the future.”) He shocks into action, grabbing his papers and essentials from the safe and helping Davey fill a bag or two worth of what he’ll need.

In minutes, Davey is dragging him by the hand out to his truck, and before Jack even has his seatbelt buckled, Davey is peeling down the road, heading Northwest.

“He flew into Valdosta,” he explains, his knuckles white as he grips the steering wheel. “It’s turning inland, if I can get us to North Alabama we should be okay.” He swears at an incoming traffic jam and swerves onto another road.

For hours, Jack just navigates and fights his own dread while Davey jumps from route to route, trying to find a miraculously unclogged road or highway. They sit in traffic for what seems like an eternity, Davey’s nerves slowly fraying. In a few minutes of standstill during the evening, Jack gets out of the car and takes Davey’s place driving, and Davey prays in the back seat for a while.

Late at night, they end up at a hotel in Alabama, having decided that they’ve gone far enough to be safe. They stumble inside with their bags and the woman at the desk takes one look at them, dead on their feet.

“Running from the hurricane?”

Davey nods, leaning against Jack. “D’you have anything with two beds?” She checks and sighs.

“We’re booked near solid thanks to all this. I got one with a bed and a futon.”

“Done.”

They pay, and Jack goes up with their bags while Davey scavenges some leftover dinners., and after a few minutes of searching finds their room. He’s careful to not make much noise as he sets their bags down, inspecting the free soap and getting the futon ready. There’s a TV that they can watch tomorrow, but it’s far into quiet hours, so he doesn’t turn it on.

Eventually, Davey staggers in, holding a feast. He hands Jack a plate, and then tucks into his own, only mashed potatoes, peas, and bread. Jack tilts his head, confused, and Davey sighs. “They only had catfish and pulled pork. Not kosher.”

“Oh.” He points at the napkin-wrapped bundle of cookies Davey brought up. “You can take the extra one.”

Davey smiles and tears apart his bread. “I’d like that.”

After their midnight dinner, Davey tries to turn the TV on, but he eventually agrees to get some sleep and start panicking again in the morning. Then, he insists on taking the futon, an argument Jack can’t win.

They both lie awake for ages, Davey turning uncomfortably on what is barely more than a cot, and once Jack thinks he’s suffered enough to relent, he pads over to the futon, nudging Davey’s shoulder.

“C’mon. We’ll share the bed.”

Davey opens one eye. “What if I kick you?”

“I’ll live.” They have a bit of a staring contest, and Davey finally sighs.

“Okay.”

Once in bed, Jack watches Davey carefully, his chest aching at the way he curls in on himself, his worried eyes glinting in the dim moonlight. After a moment, Jack opens his arms, and Davey hesitates before he edges closer, his hand resting on Jack’s chest.

They fall asleep shortly after, and when he wakes up, Jack’s forehead is pressed against Davey’s collarbone. He almost wants to back away, but Davey’s still asleep, looking so blessedly peaceful that Jack can’t bear to wake him.

He lets himself observe Davey as he sleeps, tilting his head back ever so slightly to get a good look at his face. His eyes are softly closed, his lashes partially conceal his dark circles, and his curls are messy, pressed to the side by his pillow. Jack only then notices Davey’s arm wrapped around his waist, and he, again, almost pulls away.

Part of it is that he just doesn’t like being touched around his stomach and waist, especially not by Davey, who he wants, so desperately, to think he is flawless. It’s like showing someone your worst report card or a catalogue of your most embarrassing interests. 

The other part, though, is that it just feels so horrifyingly, wonderfully comfortable. He lets his head fall back, ever so delicately, to the crook of Davey’s shoulder, and marvels at the way they seem to slot together.

The string barely needs to extend a few inches to connect them, their hands so close to each other.

It occurs to Jack to wonder just how far the “meant for each other” aspect extends. What does that mean, at the end of the line? Does it just touch their hearts, create an infinite possibility for fondness? Does it reach to their minds, as well, to make the two of them a natural match, compatible to every end? Against his wildest hopes, could it even make it so that their bodies, too, are meant to fit together like this?

A lump forms in his throat at the idea that everything he has detested about himself-- the hands just like his father’s, the bump where he broke his nose, the soft, round curves everywhere that Davey is smooth, firm lines-- has been, all this time, designed perfectly to fit against Davey.

He doesn’t cry, but he comes the closest that he has since he was seven and swore he never would.

Davey’s eyes eventually flutter open, and he looks down at Jack, smiling hazily. “Morning.”

“Hey,” Jack says cautiously, unsure of how Davey will react when he remembers the circumstances that have led them to this hotel.

After a few seconds of Davey blinking sleepily, his eyes fly open. “Shit,” he gasps, and he rips himself out of bed, making Jack almost scream at the feeling of losing that all-consuming contact.

All that day, Davey is a flurry of frantic energy, the news constantly playing on the TV, calling and texting and praying and doing whatever he can to get through to everyone.

Jack does his best to help, contacting their friends that they know left, figuring out where they are and what they need. Spot has taken the opportunity for a road trip, and is currently outrunning the last of the hurricane up the east coast with only his motorcycle and some camping supplies. Jack entertains himself momentarily with the image of Spot and his stupid motorcycle being lifted away by the storm like Dorothy’s house.

“Kath and Sarah are staying at her family house,” he reports to Davey at three in the afternoon, sitting next to him at the tiny table. “In Crocodile Point, I think? It didn’t get hit too bad.”

“Alligator Point,” Davey corrects, sounding distracted. “It’s on the panhandle.” There’s been a crease between his eyebrows for the last four hours, and he scrubs the heels of his palms against his eyes.

Jack, worried, asks, “What’s the report from home?”

“Power’s out in basically the whole area.” He picks at the grain of the table until Jack reaches forward and takes his hand, rubbing soothing circles against the back of his hand with his thumb. Davey exhales slowly. "Les and my parents are okay for now-- they filled the bathtub, and they have a generator. My mom is debating pouring the wine they have for Shabbos. She wants to keep the time as normal as possible, to keep them close to God, but…"

"It's not really safe to have your dad near it right now?"

Davey nods. The life and warmth has been drawn out of his deep, brown eyes, leaving him looking listless and haunted. "There's a tree down in front of Charlie's house, right by his door, so he can't leave right now. Rafaela and Joey are going by tomorrow to help him out, and he's gonna stay with them for a bit." His free hand comes up to rub at his eyes again, and his stomach chooses then to grumble. They both laugh, barely, and Jack stands, still holding onto his hand.

"Let's get lunch."

"It's three."

He shrugs. "You can call it dinner, if you want."

They get pizza-- green peppers, onions, and olives for Davey, jalapenos, chicken, and extra cheese for Jack. They find a coffee shop with better internet than the hotel has and camp out there for a while, nursing cold coffees and iced teas and splitting a chocolate chip muffin.

There, they try and figure out what the two of them are going to do next. The hurricane has mostly run its course, but with the power out for who knows how long and neither of their landlords particularly reliable in situations like these, they can't exactly go back home.

It's not like they can stay in this hotel forever, though, so they need to do  _ something. _

Salvation comes when Sarah sends him a very odd picture-- her smoking a joint, poolside, while Katherine floats on an inflatable flamingo, reading a magazine.

_ Me: god wish that was me.. _

_ Sarah: then come over bitch u and dave can take the spare xxxx  _

He debates the validity of this offer until Davey makes a surprised noise. 

"Kath just texted me: 'I know she's incoherent, but your sister's offer stands. We have plenty of space for you both'." He looks at Jack, one eyebrow quilted up, and Jack grins.

"How'd you like an impromptu beach vacation?"

The drive is longer in terms of distance, but there's less traffic, so the six hours fly past like lightning. Jack spends most of it either navigating, helping curate Davey's new "jams for focusing on work but still chilling by the beach" playlist, or fantasizing about what the next week will be like.

He doesn't have dreams of endless peace, but maybe, in between him working through his computer and Davey doing damage control over the phone with Battalion, they'll get time to relax. Maybe they'll float in the pool with Katherine and Sarah, maybe they'll lay out by the beach and watch the sun inch across the sky. Maybe, late at night, Jack can convince Davey to dance, spinning around in the kitchen.

Maybe they'll kiss. Maybe Jack will tell him there, the joy of the moment and the new knowledge of what their lives could be tempering the anger Jack worries may rise at his announcement.

When they arrive, Davey breathes deeply, savoring the warm, slightly salty rush of air. Jack looks up at the Plumber-Pulitzers' house-- Katherine's father's before he died, it's raised up in case of flooding, with light blue siding and buckets of heat-resistant plants and flowers at every turn. 

Katherine rushes down the wooden stairs from the front door to hug them. "Thank God y'all are fine," she laughs, and then takes some of their bags and helps them into the house.

Sarah emerges from the master bedroom, her hair tied up after a shower, and makes a soft little sighing noise when she sees Davey. Uncharacteristically, she reaches out for him and holds him tightly, burying her head in the crook of his neck for a while. Afterwards, she socks Jack in the arm, and he knows little has truly changed. 

Davey settles in with his laptop on phone on the couch, first checking in with their friends and family again, then getting in contact with Battalion. They're already starting relief plans, and Davey spends several hours typing so fast his fingers seem to blur.

They get dinner, and Sarah and Katherine turn in early. Davey and Jack stay on the couch for a while, Davey's hand resting absentmindedly on Jack's knee while Jack reads Davey's proposed plans over his shoulder.

"This is good," he says quietly, and Davey turns his head to smile at him. It brings their lips terrifyingly close.

"Thanks." He pauses, then says, "I'm putting my name on it." Jack clearly looks confused. "I usually ghostwrite proposals, but I wanna lead this one."

It takes a moment for the full meaning to register-- Davey, taking charge of something that could fail and being guaranteed credit if it succeeds. Throwing himself into the realm of possibility. Jack can’t help but beam.

“That’s amazing.”

Davey shrugs one shoulder so he doesn’t bump Jack’s chin. “I just thought it might… I dunno. It might do something.”

“I’m proud of you,” Jack says, and Davey ducks his head.

There’s two spare rooms, one with a king bed and one clearly meant for Katherine and her siblings when they were kids, filled with bunk beds. Davey heads to the kids’ room, insisting Jack take the bigger bed, but when Jack wakes up in the middle of the night and wanders into the kitchen, he finds Davey sitting at the counter on his laptop. He looks up like a spooked animal, and relaxes when he sees Jack.

“Hi.”

“Howdy,” Jack jokes, offering Davey a chip from the bag he’s just opened. Davey shakes his head, and Jack sits down next to him. “Why’re you up?”

Davey swallows hard, his finger running around the touchpad of his laptop. “Worried,” he says shortly. “That I’m gonna miss something. A call. An email. An article. Something.”

“You’re gonna miss something during the day if you’ve got no energy.” Davey sighs at that, and they sit in silence for a bit. Jack crunches through his bag of chips and goes to throw out the bag, then brushes his teeth again. When he comes back out to the kitchen, Davey is still staring blankly at the screen, and Jack sighs, coming up behind him and rubbing his shoulder.

“Come to bed. Sleep.” He’s terrified by the soft domesticity in his own voice, but Davey slips his hand into Jack’s, the string tying itself in circles around their wrists and palms and fingers. He nods, and the two of them pad into the bathroom, their feet occasionally hitting creaky bits of wood floor. Jack covers them both with the sheet, they fit comfortably into each other’s arms, and Davey is asleep within instants.

Waking up the next morning facing away from Davey, with his forehead pressed against Jack’s back, he realizes that he wants to tell him today.

The day is almost miraculously perfect, the heat having stepped down for long enough that they all go down to the beach and run around in the low tide. Sarah and Katherine stay down at the beach while the two of them return to the house. Jack is dizzy the whole afternoon with the way Davey is in contact with him nearly all day-- a hand on the small of his back, an arm around his shoulders, casual touch in the places Jack normally jumps away from.

They both shower, scrubbing salt off of their skin, and then lounge on the couch together watching some of Katherine’s old DVDs. Davey sets his head in Jack’s lap, and Jack carefully combs his fingers through Davey’s still-wet curls.

Eventually, he asks, “Why’d you come get me before you left?”

Davey blinks. “What?”

“Why’d you come and get me, and not your parents, or Charlie? You could’ve just told me to leave, or told me how to prepare.” Davey sits up, his hands clasped together in his lap. He looks almost ashamed.

“I dunno. I mean, logically, I shouldn’t have, you would’ve been okay.” Jack raises one eyebrow, and Davey purses his lips. “I just-- I didn’t want to--” he exhales shakily. “I was scared, and I knew I had to take someone with me, and when I had to figure out which way to turn I just… needed to make sure you were safe. I needed you with me.”

Jack knows his mouth is hanging, just slightly open, and Davey meets his eyes. “I tried to regret it, honestly, I know I should because now other people are in trouble. But I can’t imagine not having you here.”

His hands are shaking, his entire body is. He feels like they're right on the edge of something, and it's about to explode into a whole new chapter. He tries to figure out what to do-- assure him he feels the same, question if it means what he thinks it means, kiss him, reach out and take his hands--

“I’m your soulmate.”

The words don’t even seem to make an impact, Davey’s brow furrowing. “What?”

“I’m your soulmate. I can see the strings. We’re soulmates.”

Davey blinks, looking at Jack like he’s never seen him before. “Oh my God.” Suddenly, the crease between his brows returns. “Oh my God,” he says again, and then, his tone harsh, “Oh my  _ God!” _

“Davey?”

“That was you!” he says, disbelieving. “You, pulling at the string, yanking me away from people, any time I wanted so much as a one-night-stand--”

The fears Jack’s been pushing back roar to the forefront of his mind, pounding against his ears like waves in a storm. “Davey, I couldn’t tell you, I was…” his voice trails off as Davey’s eyes turn from a deep, comforting brown to something as sharp and sparking as flint.

“So instead of telling me the truth, you just decided no one could have me,” he spits, and Jack swallows against the lump in his throat. “Do you know how fucked up that is, acting like I’m  _ all yours  _ when you didn’t have the common decency to tell me? If you don’t want me as your goddamn soulmate--”

“I do! I didn’t wanna force myself on you, make you feel like you couldn’t choose to--”

“So you didn’t let me choose you and you didn’t let me choose anyone else! I don’t care how fucking--” he laughs angrily-- “80’s straight romcom bullshit your pure intentions were!” All of a sudden, Davey’s eyes start tearing up, and it takes everything in Jack to not collapse into sobs.

“I know, and I’m sorry, I didn’t want to--”

“Then you  _ shouldn’t have _ !” Davey nearly screams. Jack tries to choke out the words to adequately describe everything, but he only comes up with the simplest truth.

“I was scared. That you wouldn’t want me.”

That seems to take the air out of Davey, and he shakes his head, tears freely falling now. “So you did this?”

Jack ducks his head, shame curling in his chest, and Davey laughs, but it comes out more like a sob. “Well, fucking thanks. This is so  _ goddamn romantic _ .”

He tries to reach out, to bridge the small space between them, but Davey pushes him away. “No. No, Jack.” His fingers tense, as if he could snap the string and rip it apart, tearing himself away from Jack.

Unable to say anything else, he asks, “Should I go home?”

“Yes,” Davey says immediately, with a conviction that breaks through Jack’s ribs and slices into his heart. “Just go.”

He stays on the couch, huddled up in a ball, as Jack throws his things in his bag, and as he opens the door to leave, Davey says, ever so softly, “Don’t call me.”

Jack is barely able to nod before he shuts the door behind him.

He calls a car to take him home, he texts Sarah and Katherine to thank them. As he sits in the back seat, he feels numb, like doing anything except staring at the string tied around his finger would kill him.

In the car, he doesn’t cry. As he climbs the stairs with his bags, he doesn’t cry. When he opens his door and walks inside, finding the power thankfully back on, he doesn’t cry.

He scarfs the pint of ice cream he bought when he made the car stop at a corner store, his head aching with the chill of it just like the day his mother died. He throws the carton away and washes the spoon in the sink, hot water cascading over his hands.

Only then does he cry, and quickly those tears because choking sobs that wrack his entire body. His hands still soaking, he slides down on the counters to sit on the cold tile. The sink still running, the spoon still lying at the bottom of the bowl, he cries with the weight of thirteen years of hope, and with the knowledge that he’s the one to blame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if u wanna murder me thats fine i understand  
> how are they ever gonna fix this??? we'll see. i'm on tumblr @penzyroamin, if you'd like please check me out there and rb the fun little moodboard post for this!!! also.. yknow.. leave me a comment please i thrive off of them. scream at me all u want i can take it  
> its a winding road from here. one chapter left!!!!


	4. in which changes are made

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack takes a look at the world and starts to fix some things, waiting the whole time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha so. surprise theres gonna be another chapter after this. this fic is kinda running away with me  
> anyways yall are gonna have a lot of time w jack this chapter! enjoy

When Jack falls asleep that night, he doesn’t know what waking up will feel like.

At first, it’s holy hell. It occurs to him as he lies in bed, his cheek pressed against the pillow, that this is the first time in his entire life that his last line of defense is gone. Davey, his greatest hope, his once again faraway comfort, is more out of reach than he was when Jack lived across the country.

His first realization is more of a recollection-- that this turn of events is all his fault.

His second realization is that this could have been so much easier, had he forgotten the abstract concept of His Soulmate and loved Davey free from the constraints of that.

He wonders if it would be pathetic to lay in bed for the rest of the day, to let himself stew in his mistakes. The numbness from the night before is still sitting there in his bones, weighing him down like stones tied to his ankles.

Then, his phone buzzes on his nightstand, and when he manages to reach out and flip it over, he sees a message from Medda.

_ Miss Medda: Hello, dear. Hope you’re doing well. Some of us are going around to help repair some community spaces, and I’d appreciate your help :) _

He shuts his eyes and then shoves himself out of bed, standing unsteadily as if he’s forgotten how to while he slept. Feeling suddenly freer, he sighs, running a hand through his hair and convincing himself step-by-step to brush his teeth, wash his face, get dressed. He stops by the donut shop to buy a box and bring it by for everyone, partially out of generosity and partially out of a cover for the fact that he’s never needed comfort food more.

In the back of his mind, he hears Davey informing him that it’d probably be healthier to just face his problems.

He walks back into the shop, into the bathroom. Ignoring the stray pieces of toilet paper, he sets the box of donuts on the edge of the sink and buries his face in his hands.

This time, he doesn't cry, he just breathes raggedly until his heart stops pounding in his ears, until he stops feeling the burning imprints of Davey's fingers across his skin.

He's lost his father, his mother, he's only so recently reunited with any concept of God. Never, though, has he so viscerally missed someone.

Did his mother's soulmate, that nurse in the hallway, feel like this when she died? 

Or does Jack just love Davey too much for his own good?

All of this, this mess, was inflicted by his own hand. Maybe, if Jack hadn't fucked this up so horribly, he could still be by the beach, puzzling out what his life with Davey will look like. Christ, he wants a life like that. He was so afraid, the whole time, of being unable to escape, unable to forget Davey if everything went wrong.

Everything's gone wrong, and here he is, unable to escape, breaking down in a donut shop restroom because, somewhere along the line, he went and fell in love and signed his soul away to everything permanent and heartbreaking.

It's dizzying, how much he has ran away from to avoid feeling like this, only to end up here anyways. He's fled from every sign of adulthood, maturity, and putting down roots.

He can't run from this, not from the closest he's had to a home, the fleeting hope of a family.

There are three choices, at the end of the line-- escape, wallow, or change.

He can't escape. Wallowing doesn't seem to be working very well. So, somehow, he's got to fix it.

After he washes his hands, he leaves with the box and walks down to the address Medda sent him. For a couple hours, he helps install new windows and check for damage, and then he settles onto a park bench with one chocolate donut, one jelly-filled, a stack of napkins, and his sketchbook.

Normally, it’s his sketchbook, but now it’s for note-taking. He flips past page after page of drawings of Davey, determined to not get caught up thinking about the wry twist of his smile or the curve of his nose. When he finally finds a blank page, he tries to puzzle out a title.

“Post-Davey To-Do List” sounds too grim. “How To Get Davey Back” sounds too single-minded, like he’s trying to improve solely for him. Davey’s the catalyst, not the sole cause. “What To Do Now That Your Soulmate Hates You And You Need To Have Some Sort Of Purpose Or Else You’ll Shut Down Permanently” won’t fit at the top of the page.

Finally, he decides on “To-Do List” and moves on to making said list.

_ Get a car,  _ he writes, and taps his pencil for a while, trying to remember how much cars cost. After a while, he adds,  _ or a bike. _ The idea of riding a bike everywhere sounds a little repulsive, but it would be cheaper, and Thomasville isn’t that big. And hey, it’s exercise.

Actually, that’s why it’s repulsive. He hates showing up to places sweaty.

Maybe a bike and a bus pass would work. He’ll have to think on that step.

Next, he writes,  _ Learn to cook for real. _ At this point, he only really knows what Davey has taught him personally. 

_ Try to live past 55. _ In bullet-points below that, he adds:  _ Hike, Eat sort of healthy,  _ and  _ 7+ hours of sleep a night. _

He works for his list a while longer before he goes back to work with Medda. 

Over the next few days, he crafts the rest of his goals and tasks.

On Thursday, he adds:  _ Let him be until he wants you back. _

On Friday, last on the list:  _ Be a better person for him to come back to. _

With his to-dos temporarily finalized, he heads out on Saturday to go grocery shopping. Davey is with his family from Friday evening to Saturday evening, so Jack knows he won’t see him at the farmers market. A lot of booths haven’t opened back up again after the hurricane, but he manages to get some vegetables, peaches, and raspberries. He decides that he has enough in the way of produce, and at Publix, he tries to find the ingredients for recipes that he’s highlighted in the cookbook. He gets various whole wheat things, dried beans, and brown rice, he picks out frozen peas and corn for both food and ice packs, and he comforts himself with the knowledge that if anything tastes horrible, he can smother it in tomato sauce. On his last stop, he gets some chicken, lunch meat, and shrimp, and then double-checks to make sure that the food groups are covered.

It's incredible, that he can just... buy groceries, without having to worry about whether there'll be enough money for rent afterwards. He almost tugs on the string, just on instinct, but he stops himself at the last moment.

On his walk home, he gets a text, and has to precariously balance his grocery bags in order to read it.

_ Katherine: so are we gonna talk about what happened.. or…. _

_ Me: let me get home first _

Once he gets his groceries safely where they belong, he sits down on the couch to respond.

_ Me: so what did davey tell u _

_ Katherine: literally nothing he’s just been quiet and mopey for four days. he’s been crying when he thinks we can’t hear _

_ Me: we’re soulmates _

_ Katherine: dude Sarah’s my soulmate I know that for a fact _

_ Me: me and davey not you and me _

_ Katherine: OH. _

_ Katherine: SHIT!!!! _

_ Me: and i totally fucked up and acted like a possessive dick so. he doesn’t wanna see me. i’m trying to respect that and improve myself and all that _

He takes a picture of the metal bowl he’s put on the counter to hold the peaches.

_ Me: i even bought real food and shit _

_ Katherine: not gonna try and unpack all that. proud of you! _

_ Katherine: for the first part not the second part. I’d advise not trying to talk to Sarah for a bit she’s kind of a monster when it comes to protecting him :I _

_ Me: got it _

_ Katherine: you need anything? _

Jack pauses, his fingers hovering over his keyboard. After he debates for a moment, he decides that he’ll be hopeless without advice.

_ Me: should i get a car or just like. a bike _

_ Katherine: a car, city slicker, where the fuck are you going to go on a bike?????? _

_ Me: idk i thought i’d ride the bus or smth _

_ Katherine: GET A CAR. i’ll get you in touch with a dealership just pleeeaaase don’t try and save money and trap yourself in a 5 mile radius _

_ Me: thanks, love u _

_ Katherine: you too <3 <3 <3 _

He sighs and sets his phone down, deciding that he has to eat dinner before he can try to pull his brain apart and get some sort of coherent thought out on a canvas.

His pasta ends up remarkably decent with the help of some meatballs he found hiding in the back of his freezer, and he's feeling decent about the state of the day when he heads over to where his easel is set up in the corner.

Checking the time-- 7:30-- he gives himself two hours on his phone's timer before he has to set his brushes down and go to sleep.

From there on, though, it's like something within him takes over.

Inspiration had always been so hit-or-miss for him. He either fiddles around his apartment, distracting himself just so that he doesn't have to do anything meaningful, or he works like a man possessed, forgetting all else until his work is complete.

He sketches out light lines against the canvas, stepping back occasionally to squint, pulling up a reference photo for the pose but not needing one for the subject. Every movement seems to flow both naturally and robotically, letting him feel deliciously both in and out of control. He barely registers mixing colors, standing and sitting, holding up his own hand for reference, muting his alarm, adding tiny dots of color until he mixes the perfect dark brown, so close to black, so strong and vivid.

When he backs away, it feels like the air has been knocked out of his chest, like a sledgehammer has been taken to his ribs.

The canvas isn't too large, but Jack hasn't overwhelmed himself with detail, either. Davey sits in front of his laptop, a hand running through his hair and his bottom lip caught between his teeth. Jack is going to need to go back tomorrow and work on the lighting-- the glow of the screen against him will be tricky-- but it's so plainly, clearly Davey.

Jack wonders, very faintly, when he memorized every angle and line of Davey's face.

When he checks the time, it's past midnight, and he can feel it. He usually isn't tired when it comes time that he should sleep, but he's exhausted now, and he had said he'd be asleep hours ago. 

He coaxes himself through the steps-- brush teeth, pajamas, a glass of water-- and falls into bed, asleep immediately.

Sooner or later, he knows, someone is going to try to kick his ass for so obviously hurting Davey. When Charlie texts him to meet him outside, Jack stands up from his painting, resigned to the knowledge that he might get a baseball bat to the crotch.

Instead, when he walks up, Charlie looks at him skeptically. He's sitting in his wheelchair, a lunchbox in his lap, and when he heads down the sidewalk, Jack follows at his side.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Charlie asks after a minute, and Jack swallows.

"I never told anybody. Not 'till I told Davey." He pauses, not wanting to know the answers to all his questions. "Did he tell you?"

"No, I guessed. He said you'd known for a while." He sighs heavily. "I get it. There's a lot to be afraid of, telling folks."

"Yeah," Jack says, and Charlie looks at him for a moment.

"But Davey?"

"I didn't just not tell him," he admits. "Since we were little, I'd… tug, y'know? When I was thinking about him. Let him know I was thinking about him." He sticks his hands in his pockets, not to avoid any strings but to stop looking at his own. "But then I would when he was flirting, or thinking about… y'know. Someone else."

He doesn't risk a glance at Charlie, but he can feel the way he rolls the information over in his head. "Lord."

"I didn't want him to choose someone else. But I didn't want him to choose whether or not he loved me. I didn't wanna know the answer."

Only then does he look at Charlie, whose wide eyes are unreadable. "Jack… you gotta know he's crazy for you."

The emptiness in his chest pangs again. "I doubt he is now." Charlie laughs at that, incredulous. 

"He's a fuckin' mess. It's ugly, dude, I think…" He pauses. "I think he was waiting on you. He wanted everything with you to go right, and now it's screwed."

Jack tries to fit that together with what he already knows and what he has experienced. Dread settles in his stomach when he realizes just how many things are starting to fall into place-- the way Davey never pressed Jack for information about his love life, the way Davey looked at him like he wasn't supposed to see it, the way Davey had leaned in and then pulled away five too many times for it to have been coincidental.

"Oh," he says, not exactly sure what else he could possibly spit out.

They turn around again, heading back towards Jack's apartment, and Charlie eventually speaks again.

"You know it's your turn now? To wait on him, 'till he's ready?"

"Yeah." Jack feels somehow outside of his body. "Yeah, I do."

After yet another patch of awkward silence, Charlie sighs. "Look, do you wanna smoke?" Jack startles, and he rolls his eyes. "I got nowhere to be, it's Saturday afternoon."

Shit can't get any weirder, can it? "Sure."

Jack normally feels a little too in or out of his own head, and the feeling is only magnified when he's high.

"Can't believe I never did this," he murmurs, not sure whether Charlie can hear him. "Everybody thought I was. I coulda just done it."

"Why'd they think that?" Charlie is sprawled across Jack's couch, his leg propped up in case he forgets he can't walk. 

"Because I was a fucking. Dumbass, a brown, dumbass art kid who ate like I had the fuckin' munchies and looked like…" He waves his hand, trying to conjure an image of what a suburban white teenager would think of as the quintessential stoner. "Like the kid. In their head. Who did this."

"Does this mean," Charlie asks, seeming to abandon the topic, "that I'm taking your weed virginity?"

"No," Jack insists, hating the term the moment he hears it. "Noooo."

"Weedginity. Congratulations. It's gone." Charlie is sent into a fit of giggles by his own words, and then goes abruptly silent.

"Do you have food?" 

Jack points towards his kitchen without looking up. "Take all my junk."

He gasps comically, craning his head back towards Jack. "What," he cries, holding up a bag, "are  _ these?" _

"Peanut butter Nutella balls." Charlie sings an off-key rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus, wheeling back over and opening the bag. “Feel free to destroy it,” Jack says, tipping his head back and hissing when he hits the wall. “I’m trying to be… functioning? Functional?” He blinks. “I dunno which one.”

“Cool,” Charlie says, sounding vastly disinterested. Jack’s almost grateful that he doesn’t have to explain himself any further-- both the world and his thought process currently feel vaguely fuzzy, and he doesn’t want to have to debate the decision to change his life’s trajectory. 

"Don't text," Charlie cautions as Jack pulls out his phone. "Gets weird fast."

Jack tries to maintain his common sense for a while, taking a few sweets. He feels all at once weightless and too heavy, like the magnets he would push together at their negative poles, trying to force them to meet against all laws of nature. When he held them, they felt impossibly light, but also pressed almost painfully hard into the palms of his hands. When he let them go, they flung away from each other, eager to regain their natural state.

He has the brief thought that, all in all, he doesn’t like weed very much.

Then, a much more gripping thought-- “How’d we figure out to cook food?”

For some unidentifiable amount of time, they both go silent. Finally, Charlie decides, out of the blue, as he’s studying the string wrapped around his own finger:

“Lightning. Like in  _ Ratatouille _ .”

Over the next few months, things start to change.

After weeks of predictably sleepless nights, Jack gets a melatonin prescription, and he starts writing things down whenever he learns them. It leads to receipts, sticky notes, and slips of paper all across his apartment covered in bits of information, chores, and obligations he needs to remember, and every night, he walks around, finding each scrap and note. Once he gathers them up, he reads through them all and puts them in a stack next to the coffee pot so that he can read them again in the morning.

With Katherine’s help, he gets a used car, and he haunts nearby bookstores, looking for cookbooks that won’t ask him to buy caviar or swordfish. A few recipes, he puts little blue sticky notes on. Normally, he doesn’t work well with color-coding, always forgetting what the colors mean, but these cement in his brain easily.

Blue is Davey, dishes he wants to make for Davey, places he wants to take him, things he wants to show him or tell him about.

He doesn’t have the sort of aptitude Davey has with food-- or even that he himself has with art now, or dinosaurs when he was younger. The facts don’t stick in his brain, he needs a set of instructions or else he’s left clueless. But he learns, and it gets less stressful. The movements that once made him frantic, trying to reach flawlessness, are now soothing, simple patterns that allow him to channel his sparking energy and funnel it into something repetitive. 

Making progress is odd, and frustrating. He’s trying to shove away nearly twenty-two years of belief that he can shrug off anything, that he doesn’t have to put in effort if he’s leaving soon anyways.

He can’t leave this time, he can’t run, no matter how many times he burns himself on hot pans or forgets an appointment or becomes so caught up in a painting that he sets aside his simplest needs.

Over and over again, he tells himself that he’s trying to live. He’s trying to create a life worth living, and that means sometimes doing shit that he’d really rather not.

The point doesn’t really settle in for him until a conversation with Medda, during lunch break. Most everyone has left the office to go get something to eat, but he’s still at his desk, double-checking a calculation from the budget handout.

Medda taps on his desk with one pink-painted nail, smiling when he looks up. “I’m gonna get a bite, kid, you want me to bring you something?”

“No, thanks. I got leftovers.” He displays his tupperware. “I tried making one of those noodle squash things? It didn’t suck, I count it as a win.”

She turns towards the door, then pauses and walks back to face him, suddenly serious in a gentle sort of way. “You ain’t trying some sort of diet thing, are you?”

He tries to snort out a laugh, but it falters at the concerned tilt of her head. “No, ma’am, really,” he insists, and then tries to lighten the mood: “You saw me go fuckin’ monster mode on the banana bread that Mary Rose brought.”

“You’d tell me the truth?” Medda asks critically, and he nods. Her shoulders slack a little, and she gives him a soft smile. “Alright. I worry.”

“You don’t need to. I’m just… trying to make my days just, y’know, a little better, all-around. I’ve looked like me for my whole life, I doubt much is ever gonna change in that department.”

“It shouldn’t,” she says firmly. “There are too many good things you can do for you to go wasting all that energy on trying to fix shit that’s already good.” She says the word good with such simplicity, such frankness. Nothing that can be interpreted oddly or pored over, just… good. Good, she has declared him, good.

She pinches his cheek, making him smile, and leaves to get lunch.

The spaghetti squash tastes better than it did yesterday, he notes, surprised.

Jack, for the life of him, can’t figure out why he chose to do it. But one day, sick of his apartment, he throws his watercolor paints and some pencils and paper into a backpack along with some oranges and a water bottle, and he finds someplace to hike.

Eventually, he sits down at an outlook, feeling a little superhuman at the way he can look out so far in any direction. Criss-crossing around him, leading out across the globe, there is string after string, cutting through the wilderness, passing through trees and swamps and grassland, nearly taking his breath away.

Without even thinking, he starts to sketch the endless lines, their soft red glow amidst browns and greens and sandy yellows, standing out brightly against dark blue lakes.

He doesn’t leave the outlook for hours, working through his oranges and only stopping when he takes a sip from his water bottle only to realize that he’s drained it.

Examining the piece, he finds himself oddly satisfied with it. It’s not finished-- he still needs to complete the soft, painted colors, and that will probably require more paints than he’s brought with him. But it’s quite good, he allows himself to decide, and he holds it carefully so that it dries under the sun as he hikes the mile or two back to his car.

Not speaking to Davey feels oddly like divorce-- they both still talk to Charlie and Katherine, but Sarah doesn’t talk to Jack anymore. Davey doesn’t go places where Jack took him, and Jack doesn’t go places where Davey took him. It’s as if they’ve divided their meaningful memories, split them up, and declared them private domain.

Most of the people Davey has introduced him to treat Jack with a casual familiarity. No one is outwardly hostile, and no one mentions the fact that Davey and Jack haven’t talked in months.

Luckily, Spot lives one town over, and Jack hasn’t had the absolute pleasure to see him since he and Davey split. Unluckily, though, when they finally run into each other, it’s when Spot steps behind Jack into the line at the Walmart check-out.

Jack doesn’t even realize he’s there until Spot speaks up, right when he’s handing his card over to the cashier.

“ _ You. _ ”

He turns, sees Spot, and doesn’t even have time to abandon ship and bolt before Spot is stepping right into his personal space, jabbing a finger against his chest in a way that feels all too critical and invasive. He’s gotten far too used to friendly, affectionate touch, he thinks as his throat tightens just at the contact.

“Do you have any idea what the  _ fuck  _ you threw away?” Spot hisses. Jack sends a frantic look to the cashier, who is watching with a sort of disturbed interest. “Do you just have no clue what you had?” Jack blinks, open-mouthed, and Spot sneers. “Check out your shit.”

As soon as a bag falls into Jack’s hand, Spot is pushing him out of the store, and the cashier doesn’t bother to make him come back and pay for the six-pack of beer in his hand. He shoves Jack towards the side of the store, and he stumbles back against the brick, vaguely wondering how badly he’ll be hurt.

Instead, Spot just runs a hand through his short hair, looking oddly despairing. “You have no clue, man,” he says, and Jack suddenly recognizes the emotion thick in his voice. “He fucking  _ adored  _ you. Jack this, Jack that, Spot, wait ‘till you hear what Jack said, Spot, doesn’t Jack look good today? The amount of times he turned me down ‘cause of you…”

“I don’t… I don’t know anything about the two of you.”

"No shit. God, you know he hates failing, he hates things going downhill.” He snorts out a bitter laugh. “He works at Battalion and cooks and plays lacrosse in case law doesn’t work. He fucks with  _ me _ ,” he points a finger at his own chest, and then pushes it into Jack’s shoulder, “in case  _ you  _ didn’t work. I was a rebound before you even showed up.” He steps away, pacing and dragging a hand down his face. “I should kick your ass, you know?”

“I’m no good in fights,” Jack manages. “It wouldn’t be hard.”

Again, there’s a vicious sneer. “No shit, Paddington Bear.”

Jack is torn between emotions-- hurt curled up in his chest at being insulted by the same person he compares himself to constantly, and an odd nonchalance that reminds him that, to be fair, he does own a coat practically identical to Paddington’s, and of all the people-- or animals-- to be compared to, Paddington is very kind.

“You better fix this,” Spot says, his voice low and dangerous. “Fix the shit you messed up, or so help me…” He trails off, and looks suddenly hopeless. “He adores you,” he manages to repeat before he walks away quickly. His string trails towards the center of town, going too far for Jack to see its end.

Jack slumps against the brick wall, breathing out a heavy sigh.

Summer had just begun to near its end when he and Davey parted ways. Then, without Jack even realizing it, autumn had faded in, and the oppressive heat lifted. He drifted through those months, hardly even recognizing it since he’s so caught up with his smaller, private world.

Winter, though… winter hits him like a kick in the chest.

Davey loves Georgia winters, he remembers, and had gushed to Jack about how he couldn’t wait for him to experience one.

Does Davey, too, feel this absence, this everlasting  _ wrongness  _ every time he wakes up in the newly-cold mornings? Or has he moved beyond those promises of driving up, just the two of them, to where the snow is so much more than an annual day of barely-there powder?

The winter feels like every facet of Davey. It’s warmer than New York winters, but the air is crisper than it is in the summer, and there’s plenty of reason for sweaters and jackets. Jack, every day, sees strings wound around mittened and gloved fingers, twisted together as couples hold hands, concealed as people stick their hands in their pockets.

It only worsens the dull pain in his chest, but he always shoves it away and keeps moving.

On Christmas, he doesn’t dare go to any of the Catholic churches around him, but one of Davey’s activist friends posts a link to a sermon, so he watches that, curled up on his couch. He bought himself a candle a few weeks ago, a massive one that smells slightly of vanilla and cinnamon, and it burns while he watches a man preach about forgiveness, salvation, and the worthwhile journeys.

“You don’t have to be guilty,” he hears Davey say in the back of his mind.

Hanukkah ended about a week ago, and just like he does every time a holiday passes, Jack hopes it was good to him. He almost texted Davey after Yom Kippur, using the easy entrance of hoping he had a good holiday, but he had shut his phone off before he could fall to the temptation.

He’s waiting for Davey, this time, he reminds himself. He repeats the thought, over and over, until it becomes a sort of sermon in and of itself.

January passes without incident, and in what seems like mere moments, it’s February.

Davey’s birthday is February 7th, and Jack has an odd sort of celebration for it that sums up to drawing him a lot and smiling at the selfie Charlie sends of him, Davey, and Katherine all reeling with laughter.

That night, as he’s brushing his teeth, he examines himself in the mirror. It’s not particularly something he’s fond of doing, but he does so anyway. 

He finds, perplexingly, that he’s not the person he used to be. Of course, he still looks like himself. Physically, really, there’s not much difference, other than his hair being a little longer than he used to cut it. But there’s  _ something  _ that’s changed.

On February 18th, at precisely 3:25, there’s a knock at his door. Jack knows the date and time by heart because, in the moment, it confuses him-- he’s not expecting anyone, not at this hour. If he gets murdered, he supposes, that’s just the price he’s going to pay for answering. Wiping paint off his hands, he opens the door, and feels his heart stutter to a stop.

“Hi,” Davey says.

He’s still unforgivably gorgeous. Jack stares for a few seconds, and then catches himself, air returning to his lungs. “Hey! God, uh, come in, please!” He steps out of the way so that Davey can walk in, and he watches as Davey’s eyes immediately travel to the painting Jack had just paused work on.

“Wow.”

“Wow?” Jack repeats, and Davey breathes out something between a sigh and laugh.

“This is just… beautiful, Jack. I mean, your stuff has always been good, but… you’ve gotten better, huh?”

“You think?” he says, and Davey nods slowly, inspecting it.

“The lighting is really gorgeous, how it reflects? And the shadows?” He smiles for a moment, but it fades away, and he sobers. “I can’t believe I missed this.” Jack looks at him carefully, confused, and Davey says, “You improved. Your art, it changed, and it grew, and I… I wasn’t here.”

“You shouldn’t have been. You were right to leave.”

Davey looks at him, one eyebrow raised, and then eventually says, “I know. But I did miss you.”

All the warmth in his chest has been building-- through Davey remembering what Jack has taught him about art, through Davey recognizing the change that has taken place-- and those words, “I did miss you,” makes all that warmth crackle and explode. For a moment, he’s unable to speak, unable to move, unable to breathe.

Finally: “I missed you, too.”

Davey exhales quietly, his eyes shining. He rubs his hands together, holding onto his pinky where the string is tied for just a moment. Jack jumps in before he can speak again, wanting to place everything on the table, to push his cards away from his chest.

“I’m sorry. I really am, Davey, I shouldn’t have done all that.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Davey insists, a worried crease between his eyebrows. “Jack, I know your brain fucks with you sometimes, I know what’s happened to you. It doesn’t make what you did alright, but… I should’ve talked to you. We could’ve… let stuff out. Worked on it.”

“But you were right to be angry.”

“I know,” Davey says again. He rubs at his forehead. “This is such a mess. I’m sorry, I wish I could be better. I wish this could’ve been better.”

“You’re… you’re so good, Davey.”

“So are you,” he says, seeming weary, “but you don’t seem to recognize it.”

That gets a soft, huffing laugh out of Jack, and the corner of Davey’s mouth tips up.

“Why’re you here?” Jack asks. “Not that I don’t want you to be. But. Why now?”

Davey pauses, pursing his lips for a moment, and then he says, “I’ve been with other guys since we… stopped. I’ve slept with them, even, I was with one guy for a month or two. He was nice.”

Jack pushes away the lump in his throat, the possessive twitch in his fingers, the hurt in his stomach. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Davey’s eyebrows go up. “You’re okay with that?”

“I mean, I’m not  _ psyched  _ about it,” he jokes. “But… yeah. I don’t want to control you. I don’t want to make you feel bad for just… existing.”

There’s something unreadable in Davey’s eyes. “What if I’d forgotten about you?” he asks, his voice barely more than a whisper.

It’s lost on Jack how he’s supposed to respond to that, so he just tells the truth. “I would’ve wanted to forget me. I would’ve ran and not looked back.”

That settles in the room-- the fact that Davey is here, the fact that Jack is here, the fact that they’re balancing on a tightrope of what-ifs.

When the silence becomes unbearable, Jack almost speaks, but he doesn’t. He sits in the discomfort, he lets Davey puzzle through the words.

Eventually,  _ finally,  _ Davey speaks. “I don’t.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to forget you.” He looks Jack right in the eye, and Jack is almost lost in the dark, warm brown. “What happens if I don’t want to?”

Everything feels, all at once, too warm and too cool. Jack almost breaks under the desire to do whatever it takes-- explain every word of his inner monologue, show Davey every drawing he’s ever done of him,  _ beg _ \-- to get Davey to step right into his space, take Jack in his hands, and kiss him until the world ends. Instead, he considers before he speaks.

“I think I make you lunch.”

Davey blinks, his brow furrowing. “It’s three in the afternoon.”

“Not right now, just… Um, are you free Sunday?”

“Yeah?”

“If you want, come over at noon. I’ll make lunch, we can talk, catch up, all that.” Davey looks hesitant, and Jack scrambles to say, “I’m trying to make my life more… rooted, y’know? Sustainable. I got a promotion, I’ve been getting all the nutrients and shit, sleeping better… I hike now, and you can tell me about all your new stuff, we can catch up, and just… go from there.”

“Do you think--” Davey clears his throat, and it occurs to Jack that he’s never seen him this nervous. “Do you think it’ll go anywhere?”

“I dunno.” The words scrape out of his throat, the admittance that, maybe, things are hopeless. “But if we just… talk? That’s good enough for me. I just think we should try.”

Davey nods, more to himself than to Jack. It’s hesitant at first, but then it grows in conviction. “Yeah. Okay, let’s do it. Let’s have lunch.”

Jack feels like he might erupt-- like he should kiss Davey, or scream out the window, or go run a mile, or something like that. Instead, he just beams, his cheeks and his jaw hurting with the force and exuberance of it.

“Okay,” he says. “Lunch.”

Davey almost says something, then shuts his mouth. After a moment of pensiveness, he speaks. “You asked me why I came over.” Jack nods, encouraging. “I applied for a couple internships, at firms and stuff. I don’t know if I’ll get any of them.”

“That’s…” He fades off, unable to put to words everything brewing in his throat. “That’s really great, Davey, I’m proud of you.”

“I just figured… if I never try something that might fail, I’m gonna get the same result as if I had tried and failed, y’know?” He looks uncomfortable with his words-- they’re not organized, still unpolished, still raw and uneasy. Jack nods.

“Yeah. Yeah, I get it.”

Davey smiles a little. “I need to get back home. Lunch on Sunday?”

“At noon,” Jack confirms, and Davey reaches forward, squeezing his hand for a moment. Jack can hardly breathe at the feeling of the warm, familiar lines of Davey’s palm, and then Davey drops his hand and steps back.

“Bye, Jackie.”

He leaves, and when the door closes, Jack loses the ability to contain himself. He opens his mouth and, without making a noise, screams, silently and furiously and triumphantly. He forces air out of his lungs, expelling every ounce of joy, and then collapses on his couch, still giddy.

“Lunch,” he whispers to himself. He looks down at the string tied to his finger and beams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> davey's back and i MISSED WRITING HIM. ch 5 is just smooth sailing, folks, no turmoil, just them rebuilding their relationship and being grossly in love  
> im on tumblr @penzyroamin, check me out and please rb my post for this fic! it's pinned at the top of my blog and has a nice moodboard  
> leave a comment if u liked this!!! i thrive off of them  
> anyways. i love u thank u for reading x


	5. in which lives continue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's not as if Jack doesn't want to kiss him-- he thinks about it practically every time Davey rolls his eyes. It's just that it's his turn, now, to wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI!!! HAVE AN EPILOGUE!!! ITS NEARLY MIDNIGHT IM TRYING NOT TO PASS OUT. ENJOY I LOVE U LISTEN TO EVERMORE

Jack usually doesn’t do much in the way of setting the table usually, but he makes it a little presentation when Davey comes over for lunch. He pulls out the napkins that Medda gave him as a housewarming present and folds them carefully, lighting one of his less gimmicky candles and placing it on his table.

He spent a little extra on groceries yesterday to get a nice loaf of french bread, so he slices a few pieces and puts them in the toaster. At one, right on the dot, the buzzer rings-- because Davey’s always punctual, always-- and Jack lets him in.

“Hi,” Davey says, hesitating at the door, and Jack smiles against the nerves crawling in the back of his throat.

“Hey. Come in?” He steps to the side so that Davey can walk in. There’s a moment of consideration from both of them, of wondering, and then Davey takes off his sweater and hangs it gently on one of the hooks on Jack’s coat rack.

In that second, everything slips together delicately, and Jack is gripped by the reality of Davey here, smiling softly, tucking his thumbs in his belt loops, here in Jack’s apartment. Jack nods his head towards the kitchen.

“I just turned the stove down.” 

Davey follows him, and gives an involuntary, happy little gasp. “Soup!” Jack nods. “God, I love soup.”

That makes Jack laugh. “Yeah, you told me the first time we had lunch.”

“Did I?”

He mimics Davey’s voice, the sweet twang of it: “Winter’s my favorite. You can have soup, I love soup.” Risking a glance over at Davey, he’s pleased at the smile that twitches at the corners of his lips.

“Well. Good memory.”

Jack shrugs one shoulder. “It’s a gift.” The bread pops up from the toaster, a little crispy, and he turns to Davey, slightly relieved that gambling on the toaster working right paid off. “You want lunch?”

“Well, I was _told_ there would be food involved.”

Jack passes him the only bowl without a chip in it, and they migrate over to Jack’s table, sitting across from each other so they can see each other when they talk.

“This is a nice candle.”

“Well, y’know. Only the best ambience at Casa de Kelly.” That makes Davey laugh, and Jack smiles, breaking his bread into smaller chunks.

The familiarity of it all drifts in bit by bit-- Davey’s sweater on the coat rack, the way he throws his head back when he laughs, the warmth flickering in Jack’s ribcage.

“So what’ve you been up to?” he asks after a moment, and Davey looks up like he’s trying to remember.

“I applied to those firms, I’m still waiting to hear back. I have an interview tomorrow, so… fingers crossed, I guess. My dad hit four years sober, we had a little party for that. I turned twenty-three. That good stuff.” He blows on a spoonful of soup. “You?”

“I mean, I already told you most of it. I got a promotion. I smoked with Charlie, that was weird.” Davey rolls his eyes, smiling. “I’ve been getting better at landscapes and all that, going on hikes and just copying what I see.”

Davey starts to speak, and then falters before he asks, “Does it look weird, with all the strings?”

“I dunno. Never seen things without them, so.”

“Yeah. That was a stupid question, sorry.” He holds a hand up when Jack starts to speak. “Don’t you dare say there ain’t such a thing.”

“I mean, there _is,_ but that one isn’t.”

They eat and have casual conversation for a while. When they finish with the food, they push their dishes to the side and listen to each other, laughing and poking fun and settling oh-so-carefully into the comforting warmth of what they had had before.

Still, it’s a little different now. There’s a certain degree of knowledge, of awareness of those unspoken things. Davey occasionally runs his fingers across his little finger where the string is tied, Jack occasionally falters in the middle of a sentence and pulls himself back from saying things that might be too much.

After two hours, Davey sighs. “I’d offer to help with the dishes, but I really need to leave, I promised Les I’d help him with his essay.”

“Yeah, of course. It’s bowls, Dave, I won’t be struggling.” They both laugh softly, and make their way back to the door. Davey slips his sweater back on and tucks his hands in his pockets, seeming almost bashful.

“This was nice.”

“Yeah.”

“You wanna do it again? At mine, same time next week?”

Jack nods, a familiar and giddy flutter beginning in his stomach. “I’ll be there.”

Davey beams, in the full, bright way that Jack knows, the way that brings out his dimples and crinkles the corners of his eyes. “Okay. I’ll text you.”

“Sounds good,” Jack says, his words feeling remarkably inadequate. Davey pauses and then leans down, placing a soft kiss on Jack’s cheek.

“Bye, Jackie.”

“Bye,” he manages, and in just a moment, the door shuts behind Davey.

Suddenly dizzy, he walks back to the kitchen to get started on the dishes.

Around seven, he gets a message:

_Davey: my mom just offered to make me soup to bring home… is this my brand?? soup???_

_Me: be honest are u like… mad abt that_

_Davey: I mean NO but still :/_

_Davey: I’ll have you know that soup has been an essential part of so many cuisines specifically because of poor people who needed to make a lot with little and long story short soup haters are the culinary bourgeoisie_

_Me: fgsjdhsjfysjhd are you ok_

_Davey: little bit tipsy but besides that Im good to go_

_Me: go… where??_

_Davey: … I don’t know. I have a lot of thoughts_

_Me: im aware, dave_

The next time they have lunch, Davey doesn’t let Jack into the kitchen for a while. He’ll occasionally disappear inside for a few minutes and then come back to the couch, sitting down with Jack and talking with him before he repeats the cycle all over again. There’s a pleasant, domestic business to the way Davey always moves around his home, like he’s thinking of a million things at once but in control of all of them.

Around the fourth loop, Davey cheers a little, and calls, “Food’s up!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jack asks as he walks into the kitchen, and Davey shrugs one shoulder, reaching over for Jack’s shirt and tugging it so he stands next to Davey. Jack whistles at the pan on the stove, filled with rice and peas and pieces of sausage and chicken. “This looks great.”

“It’s paella,” Davey explains as he uses a spatula to plate it. He grins, satisfied, when the rice at the very bottom is burned and crunchy. “It started in Spain-- maybe Valencia? I wrote a report on it, actually. Usually made with pork or shellfish, too, but this is a kosher kitchen, so.” He laughs to himself. “They make special pans just for making it-- Kath got me this small one, and she’s got a big one at her place I use for parties. Alright, I’m rambling.” He takes his dish towel off his shoulder, where it always stays when he cooks, and hangs it back up. “You want something to drink?”

“Water sounds fine.”

“Water it is.”

It’s been a while since they’ve cooked together or done anything like this, but the rhythm comes back easily, the two of them weaving through Davey’s kitchen like it’s second nature. Jack watches Davey out of the corner of his eye the whole time, observing all the little details he’s missed-- the burn scars on two of his fingertips, the tilt of his head when he’s thinking, and the way it accentuates his collarbone. For everything Jack wants to do-- to brush his fingers over those scars, to press kisses along Davey’s collarbone and ask him what he’s thinking about-- the impatience of yearning is lessened by Davey’s casual touch. He places his hand on the small of Jack’s back every time he walks behind him, both a reassurance and a warning that he shouldn’t step back.

By the time they sit down for lunch, Jack has worked himself into enough of a smitten frenzy that he barely even hesitates before taking Davey’s hand across the table. Davey smiles, shifting their hands so that his own is resting on top of the table, and he runs his thumb across the lines of Jack’s palm.

The nervousness and uncertainty from before gently fades into a comfortable, slow readjustment: a homecoming, of sorts.

Jack groans around a mouthful of rice and chicken and peas, and Davey laughs delightedly. “So, it’s halfway decent?”

“The little burnt parts of the rice? That’s good.”

“Well, I’ll give your compliments to the chef.” Jack kicks Davey under the little dining table, which earns him an unimpressed look pasted over a muffled smile. “Oh, very mature.”

“You know it.”

Neither of them have anything to do with the rest of their Sunday, so they clear the table and Davey puts the pan to soak in the sink before they sit on the couch together, continuing their same wandering thread of conversation the whole time. They don’t sit as close as they did before everything came to light, back when Davey would fit himself against Jack’s side or set his head in his lap. Still, Davey pulls his legs up next to him, and his knees press against Jack’s thigh. He takes Jack’s hand, the one where the string is tied, and plays with his fingers, tracing the creases and lines, tapping his knuckles. 

Jack lets Davey continue with his absentminded fiddling while he defends the cakey supermarket cookies with seasonal sprinkles that he grew up with.

“It’s less about the flavor. They’re not _good,_ they’re nostalgic! They remind you of your childhood.”

Davey raises a skeptical eyebrow. “You call your childhood ‘the blandest circle of hell’.”

“Yeah, it was mainly boring. But the end-of-quarter parties? Everyone brings shitty snacks to share? The teacher wheels out the TV and you get to pick between two DVDs?” He sighs wistfully. “I peaked there.”

Davey scoffs at that. “No, you did _not_.”

“I had free food and entertainment. I was a seven-year-old king.”

“Your art’s improved. You have a good job now, a nice place. You’re handsome now.” He lifts Jack’s hand up and kisses his knuckles, so gentle it’s barely there. “I find you way more interesting than I ever have a third grader.”

Jack swallows hard. “Well.” Davey blinks at him, his eyes that warm, dark brown and his lashes infuriatingly long. “That’s a plus, I guess.”

He chuckles and presses another kiss to Jack’s hand. “It better be.”

His heart in his throat, Jack contemplates the sight of Davey. He looks at home, like any performance has been stripped away and Jack is now left with the truest version of him that anyone could find. The way he looks at Jack is so gentle, so kind-- so much like he used to, but slightly off-kilter.

There’s a new sort of honesty in Davey’s gaze. He knows, now, the truth. Jack has laid his cards on the table, and Davey just kissed his knuckles regardless.

Jack can kiss him, right now. He can lean forward and place his hand on Davey’s shoulder and kiss him.

But he doesn’t, because there’s something else new-- hesitation. Davey looks at him with this subtle guardedness, a last remaining piece of worry.

Jack needs to show him that he doesn’t need that anymore.

Saturday night the next week, Davey calls him. It almost alarms Jack, until he remembers that Davey likes to hear the voices of those he talks to when he asks real questions. He wipes paint off of his hands and picks up. “Hey, Davey.”

“Jackie,” Davey sing-songs, “you wanna have fun?”

“That depends on what fun means to you right now.”

“Charlie and I are gonna meet some friends at a bar. It’s a town over, and I’m DD-ing, so I need someone to talk to.” Jack smiles to himself, absentmindedly scratching at dried paint on his wrist.

“So you want company.”

“Please? I’ll pay for your drinks.” He can almost hear the sarcastic pout Davey puts on when Jack digs his heels into the ground, and the picture itself is enough to get him to break.

“Yeah, okay.”

Davey cheers, and Jack can faintly hear Charlie whooping. “Get outside!”

Jack frowns and peaks out through his window. “Are you waiting?”

“Have been for five minutes, doll.” 

_Doll._

He resists the urge to scream to the heavens-- or to Davey-- that he doesn’t want to go with him to a bar, he wants Davey to come inside right now and pin him against the wall and kiss him until his painting has dried and the twenty-first century has ended.

He doesn’t say any of that. Instead, he says, “Alright, alright, I’m coming.”

Charlie waves dramatically through the window when Jack nears the car, and while it’s not particularly hilarious, Jack still tips his head back and laughs, just for the sake of it. He slides into the car, pretending to tip a hat.

“Evening, gents.”

Davey laughs from the driver’s seat, and Charlie leans as much as he can towards Jack to mess with his hair. They must have painted each other’s nails ahead of time-- Charlie’s are jet black, and Davey’s are sparkly blue-green, the color of dragonflies.

“You didn’t drink earlier, did you? For the… y’know, the closing ceremonies?”

That makes Davey cackle. “Havdalah. It’s Shabbos, not the Olympics. And, no, I didn’t.”

Nothing much happens at the bar. Jack drinks something alcoholic and electric blue, Davey drinks lemonade, and they gossip about everyone around them.

Even Spot arriving isn’t noteworthy-- he spends a half hour hanging around by them, chewing on ice cubes from the drink he drained and occasionally huffing out a laugh at something. He makes a few snarky comments and leaves Jack with the impression that he’s passed some kind of test.

Halfway through an odd competition that involves Davey trying to pick up ice cubes by using two straws as chopsticks, he gasps. “Oh my god, nine o’clock.”

“It’s eleven.”

“No, lord.” He takes Jack’s chin and turns his head so he can see Charlie talking with a guy who’s perched on a barstool. “See? Oh, I knew tonight was good luck.” Jack hums, and Davey pauses for a moment. “Is he… y’know…”

“Well, this is a gay bar.”

“Shut up.” He mimes tugging on a string, and then taps Jack’s hand. “Y’know?”

“Oh.” He chances another look over. “No.” Davey sighs. “I thought you didn’t care much?”

“I don’t. He does.” Davey looks nearly wistful. “He must know, then. He never takes anything seriously the second he knows someone ain’t his soulmate.”

“That’s… kind of sad.”

“Yeah.” After a moment, he smiles again and kicks Jack’s shin. “But hey, if they go home together that’s one less stop for us to make.” Jack takes a long sip of his drink until it’s drained.

“The less time I spend with you at the wheel,” he says, not intending to finish the sentence, and Davey rolls his eyes so far back that it looks like it hurts.

“I can leave you here, y’know.” The mock-indignant look on his face makes Jack laugh, and he shakes his head.

“You could never bear to abandon me, here, amongst twunks in flannel.” Davey chokes on a sip of lemonade.

“Your worst nightmare, huh?”

“You have no idea,” Jack says gravely, forcing his face into a blank, militaristic expression that he’s seen in video games. “It’s a war zone here. People keep giving me work-out tips.”

“Well, I suppose I’ll reconsider leaving you. No guarantees.”

"You're very kind," Jack says, and Davey smiles down at his glass.

"I try."

Davey walks Jack up to his apartment after they drive back, and there’s a pleasant, soft glow that seems to surround them, keeping Jack warm through the evening breeze. They stop at the door together as Jack wraps up a mini-lecture on art restoration. The alcohol’s nearly worn off, and when he finishes speaking, Davey smiles at him.

It takes Jack’s breath away, just thinking about the simplicity of the moment. In the dim light in front of his door, there’s Davey, standing only inches away and smiling like he knows something that the rest of the world doesn’t.

Instead of voicing any of that, Jack grins back and wrinkles his nose, making Davey giggle. “What’re you thinking so hard about?”

Davey opens his mouth, but his voice dies before the words can take shape. After a moment, he asks, “Where’s the string?” Jack raises one eyebrow, and he hurries to explain, “On our hands, where’s it connected?”

“Oh.” Jack holds out his hand with his fingers spread apart so Davey can see. “It goes right from here,” he taps his little finger, “to… here.” He runs his finger along the string and the short distance it stretches out for, and Davey lifts up his hand so Jack can touch where the string ties, glowing a brighter red as it bunches together. He runs his finger along the loop, right below Davey’s knuckle.

There’s a faint waver in Davey’s breath as he exhales, and he uses his other hand to grasp hopelessly at the line Jack had traced, invisible to him. Jack shivers as his fingers pass through the string. Cautiously, he takes Davey’s hand and positions it so that it sits around where the string hangs in the air. After a moment, Davey’s fist closes around what is, to him, only empty air. He pulls despite holding nothing, and his jaw clenches for a moment.

“Hey,” Jack says after a moment, and Davey looks back at him.

“You didn’t feel that, did you?”

Unsure of what else to say, he sighs. “No. Not physically. No one can touch the strings if they can’t see them.” Davey closes his eyes for a brief moment, and Jack adds, “But I felt it here.” 

He points to his chest, where his heart is hiding, and for a moment, he worries that Davey might get overwhelmed by the saccharine nature of it all and leave.

Davey, instead, cracks a smile. “In your nipple?”

“Oh my _God_.”

The silence of the night is broken by Davey’s gleeful laughter, and Jack whines, betrayed and scorned. “We were having a moment!”

“I’m so sorry,” Davey says through laughter that he can’t seem to control. “I’m sorry, I ruined the moment.”

He could kiss Davey right now, he realizes. He could lean up and kiss him while laughter is still tripping off of his lips, while Jack’s mouth still tastes like blue raspberry and Davey’s nails are still glittery green.

But he doesn’t.

Their laughter slows, and Davey whispers into the space between them: “I forgive you, in case you need to know.”

Jack swallows against the lump that has built suddenly in his throat. “Thank you.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t bring a fucking jacket,” Davey grumbles as he unlocks his door, and Jack rubs his hands together, still fighting off the winter-spring chill.

“Maybe if you’d told me we’d be sitting outside all night long,” he says, “I would’ve brought a jacket.”

“I thought it was implied!” Davey leans against the wall near his door, the picture of disgruntled, waiting perfection, and Jack blinks at him, confused.

“So I just…”

“This ain’t Victorian courtship, Jack, you can see my bedroom.”

“That’s probably good, given that I don’t think we’ve had a chaperone very often.” He sticks his hands in his pockets, pressing his tongue to the roof of his mouth, and finally says, “It just feels weird. Going in there.”

“That’s adorable,” Davey says fondly, and the back of Jack’s neck goes hot.

“Thanks?”

“And it’s stupid.”

That shocks a laugh out of him, and he shrugs sheepishly. “Yeah.”

Davey shakes his head, his smile fond and disbelieving. “I’ll get you something.” He vanishes into his bedroom, and Jack runs his thumb along the seam of his shirtsleeve. "I got accepted," Davey calls, and Jack furrows his brow before it occurs to him that Davey can't see it.

"What?"

"For one of those internships."

The words set in, and Jack smiles so widely his eyes hurt, and his chest aches with the assurance that it might split in two before he can convey what's inside it. "You're... That's great, Dave, I'm proud of you."

"It's no big deal," Davey says, sounding bashful even through a wall.

"It's a very big deal, and you're a genius."

"Thanks." Davey comes back into the room, visibly fighting back a smile, and tosses over a jacket.

Jack stares down at the letterman as yet another shocked laugh bubbles out of him, this one with an edge of disturbed nerves. “I was thinking, like a blanket.”

Furrowing his brow, Davey picks his keys back up from the table by the door. “What’s wrong with it?” Jack stares blankly, and he reassures him, “It’s a size big on me, you’ll be fine.” After more silence, he says, “I can get another, I just thought you’d look good in it.”

“I trust your judgement, I guess.”

“Good. Never stop.” He opens the door and tips his head. “We’ve got folks waiting.”

Jack follows him out the door, and swallows down the bitter taste in his mouth before he pulls on the jacket.

It fits. A little long in the arms and the torso, but it doesn’t pull, and it zips up with space for him to just sink into the fabric that smells so slightly like the dry cleaner’s.

Davey turns around to look at him, smiling delightedly when Jack holds out his arms a little. “You’re pretty,” he says, messing with Jack’s collar for a moment. The string hovers in front of Jack’s face, red and glowing, until Davey lets his hand come down to hide in his own pockets.

Biting the inside of his cheek, Jack pushes away his thoughts and bumps their shoulders together. “C’mon, didn’t you say people’re waiting on us?”

Davey calls asking if he can come over that Wednesday, and Jack’s just finished with dinner when he drops by.

Jack’s still not quite sure how to greet him at the door-- it feels like a muscle memory that he never learned that he should kiss him, but he’ll be damned if he does so accidentally. A hug seems odd, so he settles for squeezing Davey’s hand as he passes through the door.

“Mac and cheese?” Davey guesses, and Jack nods. “I can smell it.”

“Did you come over here just to take my leftovers?”

“Nah. I actually--” he stops short and makes a little rewinding motion with his finger. “I was with my family for Purim.”

Jack hums. “I texted you, right?”

“Yeah, it was sweet. I passed all your hellos onto my family.”

“Thanks.”

“My pleasure. Speaking of that,” he says, lacing his fingers together in front of him in a nervous sort of clasp, “would you want to meet them?” Jack doesn’t get time to answer before Davey rushes into an explanation. “I obviously had to mention you to tell them you said hello, and they weren’t satisfied by “a guy I’m seeing”, and then my mom asked if you’re Jewish--”

“Oh, so they _really_ weren’t satisfied.”

“And when I said no, my dad got suspicious because if you’re a goy and you’re still texting me for a holiday that ain’t Chanukah, it must be serious. And somewhere along the line it all got fucked and I hate keeping secrets so I just told them you’re my soulmate.”

“Ah.”

“And then that was all my parents--”

“Davey,” Jack says, gentle but forceful, and Davey stops talking. “I’d love to meet your parents.”

“Oh.” The tense clench of Davey’s jaw vanishes, and he grins. “Cool.”

“When?”

“Oh, any time you’re comfortable.” He pauses, and then grimaces. “That’s a lie, my mom wants you to come for Shabbos dinner this Friday.” At the look on Jack’s face, he waves his hand. “You won’t be intruding-- I’ll explain stuff for you, the blessings won’t take too long, there’ll be good food and probably an interrogation.”

“You’re sure it won’t be weird for me to be there.”

Davey shrugs. “It’s gonna happen eventually.”

And there it is-- the promise of permanence, the presumed eventuality of everything else that will happen in their lives together. Jack’s head swims with it for a moment before he can respond.

“Alright. You want me to pick you up?”

“So, Jack,” Mayer asks, “what do you do?”

Davey gives him a knowing look, a sort of _here-we-go_ , and Jack takes a sip of water.

“I work for Medda Larkin, actually. I’m in public relations right now, but I’m looking to shift into volunteer coordination.” Les, Davey’s little brother, murmurs something too quiet to hear, but Davey glares at him, effectively shutting him up.

“That’s interesting work,” Esther comments, shooting a look at both of her sons. “Did you study at all after high school?”

“I went through some vocational training, but no university.” Considering if family dinner is too happy a place for him to whip out a backstory, he takes a bite of chicken.

“And your first name is?” Sarah says dryly. When she receives a few sighs, she holds her fork up in surrender. “I thought we were giving him softball questions!”

“Get to the goods,” Les chimes in, and Davey closes his eyes momentarily. “C’mon, it’s tradition. Drugs, religion, political affiliation, something!”

“Les,” Esther says, one eyebrow raised in warning. He groans and slumps back into his chair. “I’m sorry about him, he’s chomping at the bit for a scrap of gossip.”

“It’s no problem.” He takes a deep breath and looks at Davey, who smiles encouragingly and then raises one eyebrow, a quiet question of how to move ahead. “To cover all the bases, I drink maybe once or twice a week and hate smoking, I was raised Catholic but I’m now just sorta loosely Christian. I’m, uh, politically in tune with Davey, pretty closely.”

Esther hums. “So a Manhattan leftist, or a Thomasville raving maniac.”

Jack and Mayer laugh, and Davey rolls his eyes. “That’s her favorite bit. Every time she has someone new over she pulls it.”

“Well, your father likes it,” she says, and Mayer smiles fondly.

“I have to, dear, it’s in the contract.”

Jack watches Davey as his lips twist, and he understands a little better the bittersweet comfort of watching a recovery that happened too late for it to heal you.

His mother never got that recovery, and in a spectacularly selfish moment, Jack’s glad it didn’t happen late in the game.

“This is delicious, Mrs. Jacobs,” he says, and she smiles.

“Thank you. Does David cook for you?”

“Oh, yeah. That’s how we became friends, actually. He taught me.”

“Well, it’s good to know those hours of teaching him are put to good use.” She huffs out a laugh and sets down her fork. “He asked me to teach him when he was ten, and I tried to tell him how to make lunches for himself ‘till he puts his foot down and goes ‘No, it can’t be for _me_.’ Stubborn as a mule ‘till I taught him how to feed a group.”

“Next thing we know,” Mayer chimes in, “he’s feeding the entire synagogue some holidays and learning every old recipe anyone would tell him.”

“Y’all, I’m begging you to stop,” Davey says with his eyes closed, and Esther scoffs.

Jack says, “I’m actually fascinated,” and grins cheekily when he receives several laughs and a single glower.

The family continues to hand off stories to him, and Davey’s foot moves to hook around Jack’s ankle while Les attempts a smooth segue into promoting his newest half-formed country band, the worn leather of his boot against the laces of Jack’s sneaker. “You’re perfect,” Davey mouths soundlessly, to which Jack ducks his head, to which Sarah wrinkles her nose, to which Esther frowns, to which Mayer asks questions, to which Les rolls his eyes.

They laugh at the end of it all, and Davey taps the side of Jack’s hand with his knuckles, the string tangling between them.

“Perfect,” he mouths again.

They load into the car with doggie bags of leftovers, and as Jack pulls out of the driveway, he asks, “Your place?”

“Mine,” Davey agrees.

Jack rolls the windows down so the cool air nips against their skin, and the wind is too quiet without the summertime buzz of cicadas.

“Thanks,” Davey says softly, hanging his hand out the window.

“No problem.” He fiddles his fingers on the wheel. “Why didn’t you go into cooking?”

Davey doesn’t seem surprised by the question; he closes his eyes for just a moment and tips his head in the night. “It’s partly, y’know. The fire under my ass. Cooking didn’t seem like the right avenue to install ranked-choice voting.” He breathes deeply, and it comes out halfway between a sigh and a confession. “And I just couldn’t take money for food. Hell, I couldn’t make food for folks I’d never seen.” Looking over to Jack, the corners of his lips curve up. “Like you and your art.”

“Yeah.”

“Thank you, by the way. For all of this. They loved you.”

“I loved them.” Davey grins fully at that, his eyes crinkling at the edges with the force of it. “It was a good test drive.”

Davey shakes his head. “If you fit at the dinner table, you fit.”

“Thank you.” He stops at a sign and turns his head to look Davey right in the eye. “For everything. Since the beginning. Thanks for not making me eat alone every day.” And for clearing a spot at the table, for forgiving and for saying it, for waiting so long, for a cookbook, for opening the door again, for showing up at the door, for green beans. There’s a million things that Jack will spend the rest of his life thanking Davey for.

They pull up at Davey’s apartment building, and Davey reaches forward to touch Jack’s hand as he shifts gears. “Do you want to come in?”

Jack nods, afraid to speak, and he parks the car. Their fingers lace together loosely as they walk inside, and the stairwell is half-lit as they go up to the second floor. At Davey’s door, they drop each other’s hands so he can find his key, and with the flick of a switch, his apartment is bathed in warm, vaguely cheap light.

He tilts his head, watching Davey set his key by the door. “So what’s this, a nightcap?”

“It can be if you want. I’ve got wine,” Davey offers, and Jack laughs.

“I’ve gotta drive, remember?”

“Right.” He sighs, his profile different than normal without the natural light that usually fills his apartment. “Or, you know. You can stay.”

“I can stay?”

“If you want.”

Neither of them speak for a moment, and Jack observes him for a moment-- his eyebrows are slightly raised, curious, and he stands straight, entirely sure. Every instinct in Jack is screaming to reach for him, to close the distance, to make the offer material and tactile.

He tugs on the string-- _Do you remember what I did? Do you remember that I hurt you?_

Davey doesn’t stumble back, his eyes don’t go cold, he doesn’t flinch. Instead, he follows.

He lets the momentum carry him until he’s close enough to take Jack’s hand again, and the string tangles between them.

Jack has to clear his throat before he can say, “I do want to.” He exhales softly and watches Davey’s eyes flicker up and down, unsure of where to settle. “I want _this._ But not unless you’re sure.”

With a hand on the back of his neck, Davey pulls him into a kiss.

For a brief moment of nothingness, Jack is still. And then, with a tiny gasp, he remembers everything he’s ever wanted. His fist closes around Davey’s shirt, right over his heart, and the line of Davey’s shoulders untense as they bring each other closer.

It’s chaste and crystalline, but it’s not fragile. It’s soft and solid, like the wind could blow and the water could rise and they would stay with their feet rooted in the earth.

Davey pulls away for a fraction of a second and then brings Jack even closer with a hand on the small of his back. He tilts his head and parts his lips, his fingertips burning birthmarks next to Jack’s spine, and Jack isn’t sure whether to sob or pray or grab onto Davey’s hair or just delight in it all.

They part again, Davey’s hand curved around his jaw and his thumb pressed against Jack’s cheek, like he’s cradling the very essence of spring and newness and life. Davey leans back in and presses a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth, prompting an involuntary, joyful, exhausted little sigh to slip out of Jack’s lips.

Finally, Jack brings himself to murmur, “I’ll stay, then.”

Davey laughs, so close Jack can feel it in his chest and through his fingers. “Good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so??? thank you so fucking much??? for sticking with my weird soulmate au and all the shit i added on top of it??? the reception to this story has been so kind and has helped me out so much throughout this shitbag of a year.  
> as always, i'm @penzyroamin on tumblr-- i will politely ask u to pretty please rb my post for this fic one last time <3  
> big ol thanks to @rendenrenemption on tumblr for helping me plot out this fic!!! go check them out and read their fic please and thanks  
> anyways!!! if u liked this, perhaps comment? and tell me what u liked? and then perhaps go read my gilmore girls au? and the bunches of other stuff i have in the works with southern jock davey jacobs????  
> i love u all so much. happy holidays and thank you again <3

**Author's Note:**

> i am. so excited for you guys (and jack) to meet davey next chapter. i love him  
> anyways i'm @penzyroamin on tumblr, check me out and rb the post for this fic!!! it's got a nice moodboard and it's my pinned post so it's easy to find. shoutout to my dear friend ren (@rensauce) for helping me develop this au!  
> i love y'all, thanks for reading! (ps leave me a comment if you like it please!!)


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